About Us

About the Oxford Real Farming Conference

The Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) is the major gathering for all those working towards an agroecological transition for our food and farming system. Working with partners in the UK and internationally, this unique annual conference draws on the expertise and experience of the real food and farming movement to bring together an exciting programme of over 150 panels, workshops, performances, and social events each January.

ORFC 2027, our 18th annual conference, will be held in Oxford and online on 7th – 8th January 2027.

An alternative farming conference

ORFC attracts farmers, growers, activists, policymakers and researchers from around the world who are interested in transforming our food system. A conference with the spirit of a festival, ORFC brings together debates on science and policy with cultural discussions, performances, and practical workshops. Each year, we welcome 2,000 delegates to Oxford, and thousands more to join us online from around the world.

A fringe gathering: the founding of ORFC

In 2009, the agricultural writer Graham Harvey invited Colin Tudge and Ruth West (founders of the Campaign for Real Farming) to help establish a new kind of farming conference. It was to bring together practising, mud-on-the-boots farmers and growers with scientists and economists, activists and lawyers, and everyone else with a serious interest in food systems. The idea was and is to ask the really big questions and to see who in the UK and beyond is truly farming in ways that the world really needs, and others can emulate.

So in January 2010, the Oxford Real Farming Conference was launched as an alternative to the Oxford Farming Conference, which happens at the same time.

Driven by the participants

Crucially, it has always been the participants who provide the ORFC programme. As always, the conference is programmed by you, brought together from hundreds of brilliant proposals we receive in response to our open Call for Submissions with the help of our programme partners. We’re committed to exploring the most urgent, innovative and illuminating topics this movement is interested in, and it is the diversity of participants and interests that keeps ORFC alive and growing.

A space to share your ideas and experience

Here are a few of the themes we share to inspire sessions for ORFC 2027:

Farm practice: techniques, technologies and management (think innovative projects, reclaimed knowledge, new techniques or forgotten wisdom… all farming systems and models welcome, particularly if you’ve got expert knowledge of working with cattle, sheep, vegetables, grains, bees, poultry, mushrooms, herbs etc…)

Real life stories from pioneering farms and landworkers (have you overcome challenges in unexpected ways, or trialled a new model? We want to hear about you and your life on the land!)

Politics of food and farming (What should be on the policy agenda for 2027? Bring your advocacy and campaigning projects to the ORFC)

Justice in food systems (decolonisation, workers’ rights, racial justice, disability visibility, land access, feminism, alternative economies and how they intersect – find out more in this helpful document)

Climate and biodiversity (conservation, fossil fuels, water restoration, and rewilding)

Listening to the land (land connection, rights of nature, Indigenous wisdom, ritual and reciprocity with the more-than-human world)

Science of food and farming (anything connecting research to the field.. This could be soil, human health, farmer-led studies and more)

Food sovereignty (land justice, movement-building, activism, and land defenders, international solidarity projects)

Pathways to a just transition (i.e. how do we get there? Topics could include funding, alternative economics, innovation and technology, education and young people)

Farming beyond food (fibres for fashion and architecture, flowers and more)

And much more we can’t yet imagine (a space to bring your most creative ideas to the table!)

The ORFC 2027 Call for Submissions is now open until Thursday, 16 April 2026 at 12pm BST.