Many people are interested in deepening or enriching their own connection to land, place and the nonhuman as part of a wider rejection of extractivist, capitalist modes of being in the world. They seek more traditional forms of knowledge, which might involve some elements of ritual or ceremony. But how can this be achieved without appropriating yet again from other cultures?

The Emergent Generation is a new ecosystem of young regenerative thinkers and agroecological champions. It is facilitated by the FarmED team. In this session you will hear about our process of co-design, and the diverse range of outcomes, inspiring successes and lessons learnt from our three-day launch event held in September 2022.

On the one hand the agroecological farming movement petitions for transformation in the food and farming sector. Yet on the other hand, there is the sense that this can happen whilst we retain our familiar western mindsets and beliefs, our ways of knowing, feeling and communicating. Can we really have outer transformation without a parallel inner one?

Jumping Fences is a collaboration between the Ecological Land Cooperative, Land in Our Names and the Landworkers’ Alliance which seeks to understand and address the barriers to access to land for Black people and people of colour(BPOC) in agroecological farming in Britain. The research was published in December 2022, and this session is an opportunity to hear the findings from the project, and join a Q&A with a panel of farmers, researchers and activists ideating…

With the climate crisis and threats to food security and human health increasing by the day, meat and alternative proteins are now firmly in the spotlight. In the UK, policy change and increasing investments affecting livestock and plant-based alternatives are imminent, from support for a protein transition and regenerative livestock management, the commercialisation of lab-grown meat, to improvements to animal welfare legislation.

In this session, experts and activists promoting agroecology will share their experiences in advocating for public policies and initiatives that support these transitions from pesticide dependence to agroecology and initiatives that offer the opportunity to transform our food systems.

Pastoralists are people all over the world who keep herds of livestock – ranging from alpacas to yaks - in mobile systems, producing food on the move, providing organic manure and recycling crop residues. They are amazingly efficient protein producers, conserve biodiversity and regard their animals as family members that they keep in ways that can be considered cruelty-free: without separating mothers from offspring, allowing them dietary choices, and freedom to move. Join an international…

There is often a perceived conflict between animal welfare and sustainability. There is a belief that slower growing breeds are less efficient and so less sustainable; extensive systems have a decreased output per unit of environmental footprint so intensive systems are preferable; or that we should replace ruminants with monogastrics and apply intensification principles. In this session we will explore some of the misconceptions, trade offs and areas of positive practice that are being developed…

In this session, organised by the Justice Hub, speakers including transformative justice collective Cradle Community, urban mushroom farming cooperative Myco Manchester Coop and others will explore this question. The session will look at how the prison system, policing and punishment structure UK landscapes and geographies, and the multitude of ways that the racist prison state intersects with land justice issues, whether that be the bifurcation of rural and urban relationships, the imprisonment of protestors or…