Want advice about starting a community land-based project? The Ecological Land Cooperative share their learnings from 15 years of developing agroecological smallholdings for new entrants to ecological farming. The aim is to demystify the journey of buying community-owned farmland. The session will explore how to develop a viable business plan, finance your project, write planning applications, choose governance structures, and ensure good relationships between community owners and tenants.

In our interactive, reflective and embodied session, Mama D, Sui Searle and Samson Hart will discuss our relationships to land, belonging, spirituality, resilience and resistance within ourselves and our movements. We look towards understanding land as belonging, sovereignty, homeland, or identity beyond capitalism and we re-imagine co-liberation through land and spiritual practice. We will share our experiences in relation to specific questions, then open these up to wider discussion and reflection.

The youth branch of the LWA - FLAME - invites you to an intergenerational story sharing space. We will listen and share stories from older and younger generations on building a youth-led movement for agroecology. How can we increase awareness of agroecology and food justice in generations facing a widening disconnect from the land? What techniques can young people learn from older generations, and what can young people teach them?

You will be introduced to, and practice, a problem-solving approach that is both deep and highly practical. It taps straight into intuition, instinct, embodied sense and emotional knowing, and can be applied both to the everyday e.g. ‘How best to describe and advertise for this post I’m recruiting?’ and to deeper questions e.g. ‘What is my life’s purpose?’

This workshop is for all nonmanagement level employees, trainees, freelancers or volunteers in food growing / agroecology / regenerative agriculture / land care sectors. This will be an opportunity to meet and connect with others, share struggles and strategies and find out what the Growers’ Union has been working on over the last year. There will be an opportunity to contribute to our ongoing workers’ enquiry, add a song to the playlist and find out…

Do you talk to plants? We certainly do and some of them literally will not shut up! Come and have a chat with two super stars of the plant world, the Solanacea SistAs. They are ready to bend your ear about all manner of things but they are keen to tell tales of witches, shamans, medicine folk of the globe and their more ethereal practices. Meet the Hot and Sassy Carolina Reaper-Sol and the Lovely…

Step back in time and discover the historical landscape on your farm using old maps from the 19th century.

This session is for anyone interested in finding out more about Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS), or anybody who would like to share their experience or knowledge in this area.

Healthy soils are the foundation of any sustainable food system. Yet those who steward land are often disconnected - even excluded - from the processes of researching and learning about how to assess soil health and condition.