The festival is set to have a variety of workshops from March 14-16 with an apple drive taking place on March 15.
Programme manager Babu Blatt said the festival was part of their wider programme called the Food Resilience Project, which aimed to understand and improve food systems.
"It’s just a great opportunity for people to go and see what is being done," Ms Blatt said.
Key workshops this year include growing vegetables, chicken keeping, making preserves and even a how-to on preparing rabbit meat.
Ms Blatt said a lot of the workshops were aimed at encouraging people to become more food conscious through simple and practical steps.
When mentioning the herb growing workshop, she said it was "aimed at beginners, people who don’t necessarily have the land or who are renting a property".
This would allow people to walk away with skills that could make a huge difference to their diet and budget.
Ms Blatt said these skills were becoming increasingly crucial, especially in Wānaka, where food supplies were not only expensive but were also sourced externally.
"Our first report highlighted that pretty much 99% of all foods purchased and consumed locally comes from our supermarkets and most of that food comes by road from Christchurch," Ms Blatt said.
She added that this would become a major issue if Wānaka was to face a natural disaster with mass road closures that would cut the town off from supplies.
"We really think that it’s important for people to learn skills that will make them on a personal level more resilient."
Most workshops are about $15 per person with the apple drive being a small koha.
Money from the festival will also be going towards helping form the Southern Lakes Kai Collective which was started by WAO to help increase food resilience in the Queenstown Lakes district.
