Food as Medicine on Farms:
Healthcare Rooted in Regeneration
Pie Ranch in Pescadero, California
On-Farm Dates: Mon Oct 12 - Thurs Oct 15, 2026
Program Length: 3.5 days & 3 nights
The Program
Healthcare Rooted in Regeneration is a 3.5-day, 4-night invite-only on-farm educational experience for healthcare professionals with a commitment to bringing healthy food (for both eaters and growers) into institutional settings and clinical practice. Participants are invited to join a curated program designed by Climate Farm School in collaboration with Pie Ranch and Recipe4Health. This is an inaugural program, in which we are seeking feedback and discussion throughout the week around how to iterate toward a viable, valuable and replicable training experience for healthcare professionals.
Who is it for?
Physicians, nurses, nutritionists, dietitians, and healthcare institutional leaders who are interested in an immersive training experience grounded in regenerative agriculture — for those interested in learning not only through slides or spreadsheets in a conference room, but through direct relationship with farmers, land stewards, and the people building the next generation of regional healthy food systems. The programming is designed to maximize participation, active reflection and feedback on co-creating an experience that works well for a diverse audience of healthcare professionals. As such, this program is intentionally structured as a small cohort of 10-15 participants.
What we’ll do
Participants will get their hands in the soil, share meals cooked from local farm harvests, and hear directly from the farmers, doctors, and food systems leaders who are engaging in the Food as Medicine conversation with roots in regenerative farming.. The goal is to come away with practical tools and ideas for how to expand Food as Medicine training, and interventions in healthcare institutions and clinical settings, anchored in a mindset that the ways the food is grown are fundamental to maximizing health and wellness for all.
What is Climate Farm School?
Climate Farm School is an on-farm, evidence-based, farmer-led educational experience for people ready to participate in food systems transformation. Our educational pedagogy centers on experiential learning, farmer empowerment, diversified food system stakeholder collaboration, and ecosystem restoration to address climate change.
We’ve had over 350+ participants join our programs, hosted at our farm partners globally: in the US nationwide from Paicines Ranch in California to Hawthorne Valley Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley, to our European partners such as La Junquera in Spain, Spannocchia in Italy and Ballymaloe in Ireland.
Climate Farm School is a project of Ideagarden Institute, a 501c3 non-profit and a 1% for the Planet environmental partner.
Program Instructors
Dr. Steven Chen is the Chief Medical Officer of Alameda County Recipe4Health, an award-winning Food as Medicine initiative that brings together health care, agriculture, and food systems to improve nutrition, chronic disease outcomes, and health equity. He helped lead the implementation of one of California's first Medically Supportive Food and Nutrition services as a covered Medi-Cal benefit.
A board-certified family physician, Dr. Chen's work is shaped by his commitment to serving underserved communities through integrative, equitable models of care. He serves on the Board of Integrative Medicine for the Underserved, contributes to California's Food as Medicine initiatives, and has advised state and federal policymakers on nutrition and health.
Dr. Chen earned his medical degree from Stanford University, completed his family medicine residency at UCSF–San Francisco General Hospital, and has advanced training in integrative medicine, medical acupuncture, and osteopathic manipulative medicine.
Dr. Laney Siegner is the Executive Director & Founder of Climate Farm School. Prior to its founding, she was the Director of Academic Programs at Terra.do where she led curriculum development.
She completed her Ph.D. at the U.C. Berkeley Energy and Resources Group in 2020 where she researched sustainable, agroecological food systems and climate change education, and spent several summers working on regenerative farms while completing her dissertation.
She has published book chapters on teaching climate change in the U.S. K-12 classrooms and on conducting participatory agroecology research. Prior to attending graduate school, she worked as a middle school teaching fellow for 2 years in Boston, MA as part of an AmeriCorps National Teaching Fellowship.
She is a published author and experienced speaker, most notably on the topic of soil literacy at TEDxBoston. Originally from the East Coast, she now lives on a farm in Sonoma County, California.
Dr. Kris Madsen is a physician and researcher dedicated to increasing health equity. She is a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health and the recent Faculty Director of the Berkeley Food Institute. Her research examines policies and programs that can reduce the burden of disease in low-income and marginalized populations. Her courses focus on the ways in which modernity (including extractive capitalism, hierarchy of human beings, denial of our entanglement with the planet) has led to the metacrisis, and how we might un/learn conditioned thought patterns and behaviors, to imagine new ways of being and relating.
Program Schedule & Speakers
Interested but have questions?
Contact Laney Siegner, Climate Farm School Executive Director