It is now widely accepted that fundamental changes are needed across the food system to address the climate emergency, food insecurity, tackle an escalating global public health crisis, and ensure resilient livelihoods for food and farm workers. Over recent decades, agroecology has risen to meet the challenge, offering a holistic framework to address current food systems’ environmental, social and economic failings. At the same time, the steady growth of the organic market has made a…

Join the recently-formed Global Grassfed Alliance to hear about a growing international movement of people and organisations championing the production of grass-fed meat and milk from regenerative farming systems. The session will be a dialogue between members of the alliance working with different geographic constraints and increasing public interest the world over.

The Global Grassfed Alliance (of which the UK’s Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, host of this session, is a member) is in the early stages…

As power in the food system is increasingly globalised and concentrated, we need strategies to hold corporations to account for the human rights abuses taking place in the fields growing produce that supply our supermarket shelves, and improve the working conditions or agricultural labourers. Join us and hear from leaders discussing social movement strategies to mobilise workers power to defend their rights in the face of multinationals in the food and agriculture system.

In…

A medida que el poder en el sistema alimentario está cada vez más globalizado y concentrado, necesitamos estrategias para hacer que las corporaciones rindan cuentas por los abusos de los derechos humanos que tienen lugar en los campos que cultivan productos que abastecen a los estantes de nuestros supermercados y mejorar las condiciones de trabajo de los trabajadores agrícolas. Únase a nosotros y escuche a los líderes que discuten las estrategias de los movimientos sociales…

“Business as usual is not an option” – the global report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), published in 2009, came to a clear and straightforward conclusion. More than a decade later, decisive action is no longer “an option;” it’s an imperative. The COVID-19 pandemic has moreover laid bare the inequities, system failures and dangers of today’s dominant, globalized and increasingly corporatized food and agriculture systems that have…

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

The workshop will look at on-farm alternatives to soya as a protein source and alternative soya products not associated with deforestation.

Feeding pigs and poultry entirely on organic and regionally sourced feed is a long-held ambition of many organic and agroecological farmers. OK-Net EcoFeed, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 scheme, is helping them achieve this goal.

In this workshop, we look at two systems which could replace…

Leader of the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), Nonhle Mbuthuma, share’s her farming community’s struggle to defend their ancestral land from Mineral’s Resources Limited, (MRC) an Australian mining company with British investment. The people of Xolobeni town, on the Wild Coast of South Africa, fought for many years against the proposed gold mine and finally succeeded with their “Right to Say No” campaign in 2016. The proposed mine would have destroyed a 22km area of the…

In the 1990s, famine in North Korea killed 3 million people; many surviving children “lacked full cognitive ability”. Rice yields had more than halved, falling from eight tonnes per hectare down to three tonnes due to a misplaced faith in artificial fertiliser and other agro-chemicals and widespread abandonment of grassland, livestock and crop rotations. The soil had died and physically collapsed. Globally, the farming industry remains dependent on these chemicals, leading to widespread decline in…

Many grass-fed/regenerative farmers have been “going against the grain” for years. There are signs this is changing as more farmers are looking at regenerative techniques, especially with changing subsidies in the UK. US ranchers Doniga Markegard and Will Harris are leading the field when it comes to grass-based farming systems and regenerative land management. 

Will Harris took the leap 20 years ago. He is a sixth generation farmer on his family farm in Bluffton, Georgia.…