Small-hold farm-producers connect to the global circular design for food systems movement.
Grassroots organizations across Crete, two carob food products, and one landscape-based redesign — carrying ancient cultivation practice into a global circular-economy challenge on its own terms.
Two
carob products named among the best in EMF’s Big Food Redesign Challenge
100%
eco-friendly, compostable packaging
What was breaking
Small-hold farm-producers preserve ancient and indigenous methods of cultivation. Almost none of the recognition, financing or marketing support follows.
Their practices act directly on soil health, landscape resilience and biodiversity, yet too often the work is neither recognized nor funded. On Crete, grassroots organizations are well-placed to harness and scale traditional cultivation — what they lacked were connections and visibility wide enough to expand that impact beyond the island.
The knowledge was never ours to supply. It was already in the landscape, and in the producers working it.
What we did
Engaged multiple organizations working across Crete in the circular design of two food products — a carob-based spread and a carob-based granola — and pointed the collective impact at redefining food systems.
Carob is nutrient-dense, delicious, and culturally load-bearing in Cretan heritage, which made it the right ingredient for a collective focus. Carob syrup, the key ingredient in both products, comes from Ceratonia siliqua, already intercropped on Crete with wild or cultivated olive trees and a variety of herbs under sustainable practices — centuries of accumulated knowledge and technique, a continuation and adaptation of Minoan and Cretan agricultural heritage.
What we brought
- Macro scan — historical, social, economic, cultural
- Stakeholder map and influence matrix
- Map of small-hold farm-producers and their products across the Crete landscape
- EMF Big Food Redesign Challenge: pitch, story, application
- Concept paper — “Regenerative Crete | Landscape-based Food System Redesign”
- Stakeholder presentations
What stayed with people
The design work took existing intercropping practice as its starting premise rather than proposing a new system on top of it, so what scaled was the producers’ own method. The alliance formed around the two products is the durable asset — connections and visibility that outlast a single challenge cycle.
What came of it
- Two productsidentified among the best in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Big Food Redesign Challenge.
- Pilot fundingshortlisted to move small-hold farm-producers from concept to pilot.
- Retailer catalogboth concept products showcased in EMF’s digital catalog.
- Upcycled ingredientscarob spread remnants turned into carob granola.
- 100% eco-friendlypackaging designed to be compostable.
- Closed loopglass-bottle reuse model developed with hospitality partners.