Aaron Hirtenstein
Aaron is the Innovation Manager for Flower Grower Collective (FGC), bringing expertise in cooperative development and project management. With experience in collaborative governance models and strategic planning, he has been supporting FGC since October 2023 through feasibility studies and pilot hub development. Aaron is a cooperative business advisor in Scotland and Community Lead for LocalGov Drupal, a leading open source, cooperatively owned publishing platform for local government.
Abby Rose
Abby is a farmer and soil health advocate and the co-founder of Vidacycle: making apps that support a more regenerative approach to farming, including the Soilmentor Regen Platform created with Nicole Masters. Abby is also co-creator of Farmerama: an award-winning podcast sharing the voices behind regenerative farming. Based in the UK, Abby splits her time between her family farm, in Chile, and visiting farms on multiple continents to learn how to build a more ecological farming future.
Abi Brown
Abi is a second-year DPhil student at The University of Oxford School of Geography and the Environment. Her DPhil research investigates antifungal resistance in English agriculture. Influenced by more-than-human scholarship and assemblage thinking, Abi is particularly interested in the entangled roles of fungi, humans, and chemicals in shaping the emergence and management of antifungal resistance.
Adam Alexander
Adam is a grower, writer and award-winning film and television producer. He has been involved in horticulture most of his life, and lectures widely on his work discovering, conserving and sharing rare, endangered vegetables. He maintains a living collection of over 500 culturally important varieties from around the world, collaborating with growers and seed libraries in his pursuit of delicious, heterogenous and adaptive climate resilient crops.
Adam Lockyear
Adam is a founder director of Wellington Community Food CSA and Chief Executive of the FWAG South West. He has over 20 years’ experience in conservation and farming and has a passion for connecting people and nature. WCG manages 30ac of council land in Wellington, Somerset. The farm hosts 800 school children a year and will be producing 60 veg boxes a week in 2026. FWAG operates the GREAT Market Garden at the RAU on a 7ac field, training students in agroecological practices.
Adam Westaway
Having been organic since 1998, Adam has seen the organic dairy market fluctuate too many times. He has supported a producer co-operative, was a member of the National Farmers’ Union Organic Forum, and spent time in the US understanding sustainable pay price for a co-op. He is now an active member of the Organic Dairy Round Table – a group which represents all parts of the organic dairy supply chain, working together to grow the market and production in a sustainable way.
Adrian Steele
Adrian is the Organic Sector Development Adviser at the Soil Association and Co-chair of the English Organic Forum. He is an organic farmer in Worcestershire.
Al Meghji
Al has been a policy lead for Landscape Recovery for the last four years. He was also the policy lead for the Rock Review on tenanted agriculture in England.
Prior to this, Al has worked at several government departments and as a freelance consultant on sustainable finance and infrastructure policy. Before working in policy, he was a practising engineer in the water sector. He is also a governor for a London school and a director of a charity in Glasgow.
Alena Walker
Alena is the Head of Campaigns for UK Youth for Nature, the leading UK youth movement for 16 to 35-year-olds, calling for urgent action on the nature crisis. She leads national campaigns combining storytelling and advocacy to inspire political and public action for wildlife. She is also a writer, folk herbalist, and freelance creative communications specialist working with purpose-led organisations in sustainability, food and the arts.
Alex Park
Alex is founder and CEO of Biofonic, an early-stage UK startup on a mission to accelerate regenerative agriculture through scalable soil biome intelligence. With 13+ years of experience developing data-enabled technologies like wearables for human health, Alex has been leveraging her know-how to build solutions for soil ecosystem monitoring since 2022. Biofonic is applying advanced acoustic engineering and machine learning to unearth biological and physical soil health insights.
Ali Anderson
Ali (she/they) is a public health leader, birthworker, and food justice advocate. She’s founder and Co-Executive Director of Feed Black Futures, building power through Black food sovereignty. A former Black Youth Project 100 NYC organizer, she led campaigns on carceral violence, reproductive justice, and environmental justice. Ali holds an MPH from Emory and has received the Black Women Green Futures Award and won the Echoing Green Social Innovation Challenge.
Ali Jeffery
Ali is the General Administrator for Canalside Community Food, a CSA in Warwickshire. She has worked as the administrator for the scheme since 2010, before that having been a regular volunteer and consumer of the veg from the first year of production in 2007. Being employed by a small business, Ali’s part-time role at Canalside requires an array of skills. Ali has seen numerous changes at Canalside, including working alongside many different growers and purchasing the land as a community.
Ali Taherzadeh
Ali is a facilitator, researcher, and community organiser working around agroecology, food justice, and land justice. Cofounder of Splo-down Food Coop and Teasel land justice collective in Cardiff, they recently finished a PhD exploring the role of organising and learning practices in the agroecology movement on food system change. Ali works for the Landworkers’ Alliance as the Membership Services and Support Coordinator and is helping to develop movement-level strategy alongside Shared Assets.
Alice Favre
Alice owns a 860 acre, 100 person community in Dorset called Chettle. The 36 dwellings are rented at 60% market value. She is exploring turning it into a charity run by a community board. Chettle has a successful village shop, a campsite and a 10-bed holiday let. Two of her three tenant farmers have transitioned to organic, and she is managing the 60 acres of woodland with a charcoal burner. Chettle hosts many community events such as Wassail, Apple Day, May Day, tree planting, foraging walks and more.
Alice Pawsey
Alice married into farming after a career in TV. She defines her roll as “catching the spinning plates“ from health and safety and managing building programmes, to head of Sheep Sales, Weddings, Events and Rentals. What she enjoys most is recording life on an innovative organic farm and sharing it with many young people who visit. Alice does not consider herself a ‘farmer’, but a veteran support structure for a team focused on growing food while simultaneously improving the environment.
Alistair Carmichael
The son of Islay hill farmers and now a partner in his family’s farm, Alistair has been the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland since 2001 and Chair of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee since 2024. He was Secretary of State for Scotland 2013-2015.
Alma Joensen
Alma is a grower and researcher in Pembrokeshire, Wales. She is educated in organic farming and has spent years working on regenerative farms across Scandinavia and Wales, as well as teaching courses in farming, growing and soil health. In more recent years, Alma has worked with Câr-y-Môr, Wales first regenerative ocean farm, developing a Seaweed Biostimulant and running field trials on farms, assessing its potential of reducing synthetic fertilisers whilst enhancing soil and plant health.
Alysoun Bolger
Alysoun is on the Executive Team of the Biodynamic Federation Demeter International. She is responsible for Standards, Accreditation and PGS Approval. She has been involved with the biodynamic and organic agriculture movement for more than twenty years as teacher, certifier, executive and most importantly, a farmer’s wife. Her degrees in biology and fine arts have supported this work and continue to inspire her interest and curiousity in agriculture.
Amber Hayward
Amber is an environmental storyteller with a background in Environmental Anthropology and climate campaigning. In her work as Communications and Events Coordinator for The Gaia Foundation, she works creatively to share the work and vision of the Seed Sovereignty Programme, and to capture and ignite hope for the future of our food system through the We Feed The UK touring exhibition and book.
Amber Wheeler
Amber has worked on food system change, both on the ground and as a researcher, for over 20 years. Her main area of expertise is how to enable Wales and the UK to produce and consume more fruit and vegetables, particularly the role small scale and short supply chains have to play. She is currently freelance and works with Food Sense Wales, co-ordinating and doing action research on Welsh Veg in Schools.
Amelia Greenway
Amelia is a new entrant organic farmer on the National Trust’s Killerton estate. Amelia and her husband Jason were awarded Tenant Farmer of the Year in 2023, and they adopt a partnership approach with their landlords. Farming pedigree Highland cattle, they conservation-graze 1,000 acres of mixed habitat, and have diversified through community engagement on farm.
Amy Williams
Amy leads nutrition work and digital communications at the Good Food Institute Europe, a nonprofit think tank working to support protein diversification. Coming from a background in medical communications and open science advocacy, she specialises in the nutritional composition and applications of protein-dense plant-based foods for supporting healthy and sustainable dietary shifts. Her recent focus has been on the research around the ultra-processing debate in relation to plant-based meat.
Amy-Jane Beer
Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist turned writer, naturalist and campaigner. She is a Country Diarist for The Guardian, columnist for British Wildlife and her recent book, The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness won the 2023 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. She is a member of the core organising team of Right to Roam, for which she convenes the Access Friendly Farmers and Landowners working group. She is honorary President of the national park society Friends of the Dales.
Andrew Kent
Inspired by a chance encounter with a French hazel farmer near Toulouse, Andrew returned to the UK to find a suitable farm, then set about establishing 6000 hazels, 200 walnuts and 50 sweet chestnuts. Now into their third harvest, he will discuss all that’s been learnt along the way. Having been a farmer for over 40 years, initially growing cereals in Suffolk, then a mixed farm in Devon, and now establishing Glastonbury Nut Farm, he is a passionate and experienced advocate for agroforestry.
Andrew Stark
Andrew is the Senior Research and Policy Manager at Eating Better, an alliance of organisations working towards healthier and sustainable diets. His background is in land use, food and farming policy. A career highlight is the successful campaign for a Good Food Nation Act in the Scottish Parliament as part of the Scottish Food Coalition. He currently leads on research and policy at Eating Better, with a specific focus on narratives around more plants and ‘less and better’ meat and dairy.
Andy Bragg
Andy has been based at West Town Farm, which has 170 acres of pasture and woodland near Exeter, all his life. He was a tenant of the Church for 40 years, recently purchased the farm from the Church and has now semi-retired. Andy is now responsible for diversification activities: events, weddings, community groups, campsite, shepherd’s hut and farm shop, whilst a tenant farms beef cattle and sheep. With no children to pass the farm to, he recently decided to gift the farm to Fordhall Community Land Initiative.
Andy Dibben
Andy is Head Grower at Abbey Home Farm, responsible for producing a wide variety of organic fruit and vegetable crops. He is passionate about sustainable food production, feeding people and sharing knowledge. His specific areas of expertise include Natural Pest Management and Silvohorticulture.
Andy Gray
Andy has a catering butchers that supplies outlets across the SW, a farm, a dog food company, and a quarry. He licensed and ran the Fir Farm moveable slaughterhouse, has owned and run poultry slaughterhouses, processes wild shot and farmed deer, and is building abattoirs for the Orkneys, the Isles of Scilly and his own company, M C Kelly Ltd. Andy also farms regeneratively in Devon, selling his beef and venison through the butchery.
Andy Hayllor
Andy farms organically in South Devon, producing potatoes, carrots, beetroot, peas, and other veg, as well as beef and chicken for Riverford Organic Farmers Ltd. Having transitioned to organic production from conventional dairy, Andy is open to experimenting and evolving farm practice over time. As a founder member of the South Devon Organic Producers Co-Op, he’s enjoyed working as part of a learning community and trying something new every season. This year it was root crops, next year maybe redwoods.
Angelika von Heimendahl
Angelika grazes Red Poll cattle on Commons in Cambridge, the Great Fen project for the Wildlife Trust and a Biodiversity Net Gain project as part of the County Council’s infrastructure commitments. Conservation grazing and urban spaces are at the heart of Camcattle, and selling meat directly to locals is important to the business. It is sold through Farmer’s Markets, a farm shop, a delivery service in London, and through a milk door step delivery service. Angelika also works as a Beaver reintroduction manager for the Wildlife Trusts.
Angharad Wynne
Angharad is an advocate for humanity’s generative connection with the more than human world. Her work weaves the lore of this land with ecology, philosophy creativity and contemporary animism practice. She shares this through talks, ceremonies, training programmes, writings and pilgrimages aimed at reclaiming our deep humanity and re-membering a reciprocal relationship with all life. Angharad is a founder of Animate Earth Collective, a published author and acclaimed storyteller, a member of the Wisdom Keepers collective and creator of Dadeni, a programme that explores the native spiritual traditions of Britain.
Anna Lappé
Anna is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working together and with partners globally for food system transformation. For more than twenty-five years, Anna has been an advocate, author, and funder for justice and sustainability across the food chain. The co-founder of three U.S.-based organisations, Anna has contributed to 18 books and is the author or co-author of three, including Diet for a Hot Planet.
Anna Taylor
Anna is Executive Director at The Food Foundation – a leading organisation working on food policy. Previously, she was a civil servant at the UK’s Department for International Development, leading their nutrition work and was awarded an OBE for services to tackle undernutrition globally. She was chief independent adviser to Henry Dimbleby for the National Food Strategy. She started her career as a nutritionist working for Save the Children.
Annie Rayner
Annie is a food systems expert with extensive experience leading on-farm research and advising governments, NGOs, and food brands on high-welfare, sustainable, and regenerative production. Passionate about transforming farming towards an agroecological future, she holds a PhD in positive animal welfare and co-founded Planton Farm and its flagship project, Impeckable Poultry, championing ethical, innovative poultry production.
Anthony Field
Anthony is Head of Compassion in World Farming UK, leading a team of campaigning, media and policy experts. He is a highly experienced campaigner and advocate, with over 25 years-experience. His role involves developing and implementing a UK strategy to end factory farming and transform our defective food system.
Aranya Austin
Aranya is one of Britain’s most experienced permaculture teacher-practitioners. He completed his Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design in 2003 and has been teaching ever since. In 2012 Permanent Publications published his first book Permaculture Design – A Step-by-Step Guide, and he often writes for Permaculture Magazine. Aranya, with his physics background, loves to experiment in the garden, including various techniques falling under the general heading of ‘electroculture’.
Atenchong Talleh Nkobou
Atenchong is a Senior Lecturer in International Rural Development at the Royal Agricultural University. His research focuses on the political economy of agrarian systems, land tenure and food security. He is interested in critical approaches to development theory and practice, and was principal investigator for the study Reversing the Gaze: Knowledge Stories and the Struggles for Community Land Rights in Scotland.
Attila Miklos Szocs Boruss
Attila has a master’s in Environmental Engineering in Agriculture. He is passionate about the socially and environmentally fair use of farmland. Having extensive knowledge and experience in national and European land and rural development policies, he coordinated several reports and policy analyses on farmland management, agroecology and rural development and currently advocates for the implementation of agroecology both on a territorial and farm level. He is a 2025 Bertha Challenge Fellow.
Barbara Hachipuka Banda
Barbara is Founder and Director of the Natural Agriculture Development Program Zambia (NADPZ). Since 2004, she has empowered small-scale women farmers, drawing on over 20 years of experience in community development. She advocates sustainable agriculture and indigenous farming knowledge, champions women as agents of change, and promotes local seed diversity to strengthen Africa’s food security and climate resilience.
Barbara Van Dyck
Barbara is research fellow at the Agroecology Lab at the Free University of Brussels ULB. She is a profound critic of the way in which digital technology has imposed itself as ‘the’ way forward for agriculture in Europe, while hesitance and refusal of these technologies are seen as oriented to the past.
Bee Wilson
Bee is a food writer and the author of eight books on food-related subjects. She writes about food for a wide range of publications including The Guardian and The New York Times. She is the co-founder of TastEd (short for Taste Education), a charity promoting taste education and the joy of vegetables and fruits for children. She created and piloted the TastEd curriculum and lesson plans, which are now used in more than 1800 schools and nurseries in the UK.
Ben Messer
Ben is the Participation and Engagement Lead at Food Matters, a UK-wide charity with a focus on people-centred food system change, and programme partner in the Sustainable Food Places (SFP) programme, where Ben leads work on Representation and Justice. He led co-development of SFP’s REDI for Change anti-racism ethos, now widened to encompass discrimination and marginalisation under the banner of FAIR Food: Framework for Action on Inclusion and Representation in food systems work.
Ben Pratt
Ben is a director of Watson & Pratt’s – an organic fruit and vegetable wholesaler, retailer, bakery and home delivery business based in West Wales.
Ben Raskin
Ben has 30 years of horticultural and farming experience. He leads the Soil Association’s agroforestry work. He also co-ordinates agroforestry at Eastbrook Farm in Wiltshire, writes books including Silvohorticulture and The Woodchip Handbook, and works as an independent consultant.
Benedict Pollard
Benedict is a botanist, horticulturalist, storyteller, and guardian of ancient oaks. He is the founder of Mighty Fine Oaks, supplying oak saplings from the acorns of England’s most storied and majestic trees. Deeply committed to cultural regeneration and ecological healing, he invites others to join in honouring the relationship between land, story, tree, and soul.
Berni Courts
Berni is a biodynamic farmer and a senior researcher for Ruskin Mill Trust.
Beth Bell
Beth works across the food system to join the dots across policy, practice, relationships and networks, building equitable food futures with ethics and care. She is deputy director of the Food Ethics Council, co-chair of the Belfast Sustainable Food Partnership and co-founder of Carrick Greengrocers.
Bex Elston
Bex is a community food practitioner, educator, and sustainable food systems specialist with over 15 years’ experience in agroecology, community engagement, and education. Through the Landed Community Kitchens project, she coordinates learning between local kitchens and farms, supports practical skills development, and helps build resilient, place-based food networks that connect people, land, and produce.
Bonnie Hewson
Bonnie is the Director of Farming the Future, a funding collective that supports a shift to a fairer system of food and farming, and advocates within philanthropy for more and better funding for an agroecological transition in the UK. Bonnie started as a local food organiser over 15 years ago and has worked in funding a fairer economy for a decade.
Bonnie Welch
As Head of Projects at the Sustainable Food Trust, Bonnie oversees a wide range of initiatives, including the Beacon Farms Network – a new network of sustainable farms acting as centres of education to inform and inspire people about the story behind their food. Bonnie is also part of The Agroecology Learning Collective steering group, and sits on the board of Bristol Food Producers.
Brendan Conway
Brendan is a values-led property professional and community organiser with over 25 years’ experience in the London built environment. Drawing on the Irish spirit of meitheal as community cooperation, he brings people together to build fairer, more sustainable places. A founding trustee of Paradise Cooperative, he advises community land trusts and champions land justice, regeneration, and climate action through collaboration, food, and shared purpose.
Bridgette Olsen
Bridgette lives in Tuscany near Firenze. Has a small farm where she cultivates herbs and makes biodynamic preparations. Since 2002, she has been a coordinator of an association of biodynamic farmers called Agricoltura Vivente (Living Agriculture). She also works as an inspector for Demeter – the international trademark for biodynamic quality.
Bronagh O’Kane
Bronagh farms biologically in Tyron. She is a Nature Friendly Farmer who won Young Farmer of the Year in 2022.
Bryce Cunningham
Bryce is the Founder and Managing Director of Mossgiel Organic Dairy in Ayrshire, Scotland. After taking over his family’s farm during a time of crisis, he transformed it into an organic dairy committed to sustainability, animal welfare, reducing waste and eliminating ultra-processed ingredients from milk products. Bryce is passionate about challenging Big Dairy and creating a fairer food system.
Bryn Perry
Bryn is a first-generation farmer running a 35-acre, pasture-led, low-input enterprise and preparing to scale to a larger holding later in 2026. He is a steering group member for the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) and founder of Ewenique Dairy.
Calixta Killander
Calixta founded Flourish Produce in 2017. With 56 acres of farmland, Flourish is a beacon of biodiversity with more than 750 varieties of crops in cultivation, an agroforestry field, a heritage grain project, rotating herbal leys and flower fields. An integral part of the Flourish ethos is to build strong, longstanding partnerships between the farm and its customers. The produce is directly marketed to restaurants, florists, bakeries, shops and through an on-site farm shop and veg box scheme.
Carina Millstone
Carina serves as the Executive Director of Foodrise. In addition to various other roles in consultancy, academia and campaigning, she is also the founder of The Orchard Project and the author of Frugal Value, an academic book on production and consumption in a degrowth economy. She figures on the ENDS Power List 2025 for her work with Foodrise.
Carmen Posada Monroy
Carmen is a Food and Nature Story Doer. She is Cofounder of Futuro Coca, a Colombian grassroots organization that reframes the global narratives around the coca plant in collaboration with indigenous and campesino communities, policy makers, artists, journalists, environmental activists, academia, and chefs. She is also one of the authors of the Eating and Shaping the World guide for food systems transformation, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme, and delivers workshops on the various topics of the guide.
Carrie Starbuck
Carrie is Director of Nature Recovery at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and facilitator of the Wessex & Combes Cluster. She leads landscape-scale projects that bring farmers together to restore biodiversity, wetlands, and farmland wildlife. She has pioneered farm cluster networks across 40,000 hectares, champions practical solutions for deer management, and is passionate about farmer-led approaches to nature recovery.
Catherine McAndrew
Catherine is the coordinator of the Landworkers’ Alliance’s Migrant Worker Solidarity Campaign, which aims to hold supermarkets to account for conditions on their supplier farms both internationally and within the UK. This campaign is focused on fighting drivers of forced labour facing farm workers recruited via the Seasonal Worker Scheme.
Catherine Withers
Catherine grew up at Yew Tree Farm, which she ran from the age of 19. She is dedicated to producing chemical-free, healthy local food while enhancing Bristol’s biodiversity. A proud mother and grandmother, she is also a reluctant activist who couldn’t remain silent as unique and precious habitats came under threat. Since being forced out of Yew Tree Farm in August 2025, she has started a new venture – saving a village pub on the edge of Bristol.
Cathi Pawson
Cathi co-founded Zaytoun 22 years ago, after working in Palestine’s West Bank with farming communities on land access. Zaytoun tangibly supports those communities through growing a market for their products, and through sharing their stories of farming under occupation.
Catrina Fenton
Catrina is Head of Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library, managing the national, living collection of heritage vegetable varieties. She oversees the task of finding, conserving and sharing seed at risk of disappearing, and is passionate about the importance of both preserving cultivated biodiversity and promoting seed saving skills.
cee-cee manrique
cee-cee is a mushroom farmer in west Wales, where they run Hyphae Mushrooms with their partner and tend to two acres of land and a small flock of muscovy ducks and geese. They work as the communications coordinator for the Landworkers’ Alliance, where they are also part of REAL (the BPOC members’ group) and HOOF (Hate Out Of Farming), a members’ group set up to counter the rising threat of the far right in farming.
Chantal Wei-Ying Clément
Chantal is Senior Programme Manager of The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). She holds a PhD in Political Science from Carleton University, where she taught and worked with communities in Europe and North America to explore how people can play a more active role in shaping their food systems. Her work focuses on local food system governance, agroecology, and climate.
Charlie Neal
Charlie is a valuable part of the Policy Unit at The Felix Project, managing all external communications, combining creativity with a drive to make a real difference in the social impact space. She plays a vital roles in shaping key messages and raising awareness of multiple public affairs campaigns designed to make lasting systemic changes that help those in need. Charlie has achieved national coverage, helped create and shape communication strategies, led on storytelling and developed brand messaging.
Charlotte Allender
As Head of the UK Vegetable Genebank, based at the University of Warwick, Charlotte is interested in understanding and conserving genetic diversity in crops and related wild species. Overseeing a collection of ~14,000 seed samples, she is focused on enhancing both the conservation and use of the seed collection through providing information to users and highlighting key areas of diversity. She also teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate level focusing on ecology and biodiversity.
Charlotte Southall
Charlotte, a metallurgist and materials scientist, became a homeopath when she saw it working for her children. Interested in how to increase vegetable yields in drought conditions using dynamised preparations, she created a research project. In 2024 she began doctoral research on Evaluating Novel Plant Defence Stimulators to reduce copper usage in UK and Brazilian viticulture. She is on a joint Cotutelle programme with Coventry University and University of the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Chiara Tornaghi
Chiara is a scholar-activist working since 2015 as associate professor in Urban Food Sovereignty and Resilience at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (Coventry University, UK). Her work is at the intersection between agroecological farmers’ movements and urban food justice and sovereignty movements. Her work explores urban and peri-urban agriculture, political pedagogies for urban agroecology and the politics of prefiguration, feminist social reproduction, and medicinal agroecological practices.
Chloe Broadfield
Chloe is the New Entrant Training Coordinator at the Landworkers’ Alliance.
Chloe Lucas
Chloe is a mother, paediatric nurse and new entrant farmer from Essex. She started farming 3 years ago to improve her mental health after struggling in the NHS. From volunteering as a novice to owning her own smallholding with Highland cattle, she runs workshops, connects communities, and educates people about farming, wellbeing, and sustainability. Farming has transformed her life, and she aims to inspire others to connect with nature, food, and each other.
Chris Aukland
Chris is a veterinary surgeon with nearly four decades of experience integrating homeopathy into his practice. He leads the livestock health training program for Whole Health Agriculture and is committed to providing support and education to farmers seeking sustainable alternatives to synthetic chemicals and antimicrobials. His goal is to empower farmers to create practical and effective Whole Health plans for optimum health, vitality and productivity on their farms.
Chris Davis
Chris is the Deputy Director for Landscape Recovery and Schemes Development in Natural England, and has been the Natural England lead for developing the Landscape Recovery scheme for over two years. He has worked in nature conservation for over 20 years, working from the ground up. In addition to working at Natural England, Chris manages a farm on the Blackdown Hills in Devon, specialising in rare breed cattle and restoring hay meadows.
Chris Smaje
Chris is a writer, smallholder and co-owner of Vallis Veg in Somerset. He’s the author of A Small Farm Future and Saying NO to a Farm Free Future. His new book is titled Finding Lights in a Dark Age.
Christopher Price
Christopher is the CEO of Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST). Christopher joined RBST in February 2019 from the Country Land and Business Association, where he was Director of Policy and Advice. He is also Chair of the Uplands Alliance, which aims to bring together practitioners, researchers and others involved in uplands policy.
Claire White
Claire works as Senior Veterinary Adviser for the National Farmers Union, across animal health and welfare policy in all farmed species. She is passionate about diverse and sustainable domestic food supply chains and works to preserve the important function of small abattoirs. She has occupied a number of roles in the food and farming sectors, from farm vet to management of food businesses, and as a university lecturer and industry trainer, as well as exporting veterinarian.
Claire Whittle
Claire is a new entrant farmer and a farm animal Veterinary surgeon with her own consultancy business, The Regenerative Vet, which offers tailored advice to farms that are transitioning towards agroecological practices. In 2025, Claire won the Dairy Industry Woman of the Year award for promoting a climate resilient approach to milk production benefiting animal health and biodiversity. She has also won the Pasture For Life Association Russ Carrington Award for best newcomer.
Claire Lyons
Claire is a researcher exploring agroecology, territorial food systems, and creative approaches to biodiversity governance. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, examining sustainability transitions in the UK wine industry and regenerative practices in place-based food systems.
Clare Carlile
Clare is an investigative reporter for the award-winning environmental outlet DeSmog. She specialises in food politics stories exposing blockers of climate and environmental action, from misinformation and the far-right to aggressive lobby tactics. Her investigations have been covered by the BBC, The Financial Times, Al Jazeera and The Guardian. Clare was previously co-editor at Ethical Consumer Magazine.
Clare Hill
Clare farms at Planton Farm in Shropshire and has a wealth of experience at policy and corporate level. Planton is home to ‘Ultimate Chicken’, a venture exploring how to produce deeply regenerative chicken. She co-founded and runs the mentoring programme ‘Roots to Regeneration’, supporting farmers and food professionals through transition.
Clemmie James
Clemmie is Founder and Co-ordinator of The International Coalition for Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice.
Community Food Growers Network
Community Food Growers Network (CFGN) is a non-profit radical grassroots collective of local food growers, gardeners, chefs, community gardens and kitchens in London. CFGN believes that food growing and food systems are inherently political and strive for their work to be shaped by the principles of justice, care, equity, interconnection, and cooperation. They are member-led and guided by their co-written manifesto which includes building connected and resilient communities and food as a right.
Cooking Sections
Cooking Sections investigates the industrialised food systems that shape the world, tracing the spatial legacies of extractivism. Founded in London in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, their practice moves across art, architecture, and ecology. Alon and Daniel are Readers in Architecture and Spatial Practice at the Royal College of Art, London, where they lead CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA; and Fellows at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Future Flourishing Programme.
Cordelia Hughes
Cordelia is a regional coordinator for Landmatch England. She has worked across a range of organisations focused on food, farming, and land justice; facilitating thoughtful and well-designed support services for the sector. Cordelia supports land seekers and land owners to build strong working relationships for successful land matches across the North West of England.
Cordelia Rowlatt
Cordelia co-runs a land based project in Somerset with her husband, Chris Smaje. She is particularly interested in the structures and agreements that enable people to live well on land within healthy communities.
Dan Karlsson
Dan is the Director of Apprenticeships and Business Services at Plumpton College, an apprenticeship training provider dedicated to supporting the land, environment, food production, and animal science sectors. With over 13 years of experience across the apprenticeship and skills landscape, Dan has worked with organisations of all sizes. He is passionate about the transformational power of apprenticeships and their ability to help individuals of all abilities realise their learning and career aspirations while supporting business growth and prosperity.
Dan McTiernan
Dan is a certified transpersonal psychology coach, embodied meditation teacher, and breathwork instructor with nearly two decades of experience in regenerative food systems and ecological education. He is the co-founder of Earthbound, a nature-based coaching organisation, and co-leads the Calmer Farmer programme, exploring embodied wellbeing in service to landworker wellbeing and food systems transformation.
Dan Turner
Dan is The Rivers Trust’s Technical Lead for Land Management and Market Creation. He led on the Wyre Natural Flood Management Investment Readiness project, an innovative project attracting green and social investment to fund ecosystem led, catchment scale Natural Flood Management. He now works on several market-led initiatives to scale up these approaches. Dan was brought up on a large commercial farm which had the environment at the heart of its operation and is passionate about mainstreaming sustainable agriculture.
Daniel Grimston
Daniel (they/he) is a writer and actor. Their work weaves folklore, folksong and the more-than-human to explore queerness, ecology and history in an age of extinction. They are Poet-In-(Non)-Residence for Right to Roam and Singing With Nightingales. Their first full-length play, Corpselight, won the Theatre Royal Haymarket Pitch Your Play competition and was shortlisted for the Papatango, Theatre503 and Bruntwood prizes. They are working on their next play, a fable of queer awakening in rural England.
Daniel Long
Daniel is a farmer from Ireland qualified in climate and sustainability, as well as Founder of Irish Land Observatory, an organisation that helps to protect family farms and facilitate generational renewal. He has extensive experience in lobbying for farmers in Ireland and Europe, and is Founder of the Greenfarmer Coop, which helps farmers to diversify their farms.
David Bek
David, a Professor at Coventry University, is co-lead of the Sustainable Flowers Research Project. He co-leads a working group investigating ways of reducing plastics, packaging and waste footprints, leads a project developing a sustainability assurance programme for the global wild foliage harvesting industry, and is involved in a DEFRA-backed project supporting the development of cut-flower trading hubs targeting small-scale growers in the UK.
David Dixon
David leads Wessex Community Assets’ work supporting natural fibre production and use. Over the last five years he has worked with farmers, field trialing the growing and harvesting of flax and hemp as part of local agro-ecological systems.
David McAuley
David is Chief Executive of The British Deer Society (BDS), a UK charity dedicated to promoting responsible deer management, advancing education and research, and safeguarding welfare standards for wild deer. Since leading a strategic re-visioning of BDS and launching its ‘Together for Deer’ strategy, he has strengthened the charity’s reach and impact, championing collaboration, ecological balance, and the role of wild venison in a sustainable food system.
David Mwanaka
David grew up farming in Zimbabwe and has over 30 years farming experience. He started growing in the UK on an allotment and today farms over 500 acres in Cambridge. After six years of experimentation, he became the first to successfully grow white maize in the UK and later became first to cultivate white sweetcorn. He and his wife Brenda founded Mwanaka Fresh Farm Foods to sell white maize, pumpkin leaves, and other produce direct to consumers. They also supply supermarkets.
David Newman
With a lifelong passion for working on the land and growing vegetables, David founded Bucksum in 2006. Since then, he has won a series of awards for his innovative, always learning, always experimenting, always sharing approach, including Soil Farmer of the Year 2024 and the 2024 Caroline Drummond Award for Communicating Excellence in Sustainable Farming. David has been exploring intercropping, under sowing, and living mulches for the past five years and is keen to share his learnings.
Dawn Dublin
Dawn is founder of Joyful Roots and the Black Butterfly Project, a cultural heritage and wellbeing organisation supporting people of African heritage and other ethnic and underserved communities. The agriculture and gardening project, promoting food sovereignty and following Agroecological and permaculture principles, sells weekly veg bags and is about to take over a retail space in Hastings.
Debbie Scott
Debbie is the owner of East Lothian Flower Farm, growing seasonal, agroecological British flowers on the Lennoxlove Estate. Debbie is the Chair and founding Director of the Flower Grower Collective, a UK cooperative supporting sustainable flower supply chains. In 2024, she and colleagues secured Innovate UK and Defra funding to strengthen networks in the British cut-flower sector through research, sustainability benchmarking, and a digital wholesale platform (OFN).
Dee Woods
Dee is an award winning food action~ist, Afroecologist and earth wisdom keeper. A passionate knowledge broker, ideator, pollinator and weaver who advocates for good food for all and a just food system. Her work meets at the nexus of human rights, food sovereignty, agroecology, community, policy, food ethics, decolonial research, reparations, culture, climate, and social justice.
Don Staniford
Don is Director of Scottish Salmon Watch and the Real Salmon Farming Resistance. He has campaigned against salmon farms for over twenty five years – working with Friends of the Earth Scotland, Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Pew Environment Group, Green Warriors of Norway and $camon $cotland. His publications include Silent Spring of the Sea, Cage Rage and The One That Got Away.
Dora Taylor
Dora is the Oxford Real Farming Conference Justice Strand programme coordinator. She is also a chef, writer and activist, and is part of the Farmerama Radio team.
E.J. Milner-Gulland
EJ is Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at Oxford University. Her research focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions for effective natural resource management, and the trade-offs and synergies between conservation and human wellbeing. She has worked on agricultural systems around the world, including with pastoralists and small-scale farmers, and on innovative approaches to supporting farmers to improve environmental sustainability.
Ed Gardener
Ed (he/him) is an agroecological veg grower and stockman. He is the founder of Ed’s Veg and is active in The Landworkers’ Alliance and La Via Campesina.
Ed Scott
Ed is Polytunnel Operations Manager at Riverford Organic Farmers, focusing primarily on tomatoes and cucumbers. As an employee-owned business, Ed is a member of Riverford’s co-owner Council, and when not in the tunnels or getting distracted by dormice and barn owls, he’s also an elected Trustee Director on the board that protects the business’s values and ambitions for the future.
Eddie Rixon
Eddie is the current steward of Lopemede Farm in Thame, Oxfordshire and is a fourth generation regenerative beef and sheep farmer, building natural capital for a better future and collaborating with businesses to get a better connection to nature. In 2025, Eddie started a farm-based education CIC at the farm to cultivate connection with food, farming and nature, and to empower children to make informed decisions that positively impact climate, biodiversity, food, and the health of all.
Edu H. Nualart
Edu is a farmer and activist from the Catalan countryside currently living in Amsterdam, where he is involved with the grassroots collective ASEED and member of Toekomstboeren and the European Coordinator of La Via Campesina. For the last 6 years, he has been running the PLUK CSA farm on the outskirts of Amsterdam.
Edward Morgan
Born and raised on a mixed farm in Carmarthenshire, Ed has been in the food industry throughout his career. Working for 25 years with foodservice wholesaler, manufacturer, and distributor Castell Howell Foods, he has a broad understanding of the sector. He is currently working on sustainable supply chains, and sustainable diets predominantly with the >800 schools the company supplies weekly.
Elaine Bradley
Elaine is the Executive Director of the Irish Seed Savers Association, Ireland’s leading NGO for the conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. With an MSc in Management (Organisational Behaviour), Elaine’s professional focus is strategic development and change management: organising for justice and sustainability. Passionate about nature and the environment, Elaine is a qualified Permaculture Designer.
Elaine Lisbeth Acosta
Elaine has over 12 years of experience in international pesticide management, focusing on reducing or eliminating highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) and promoting sustainable alternatives in Latin America. At the University of Edinburgh’s Center for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, she coordinates projects to reduce suicide in Latin America. She holds degrees in agricultural engineering and two master’s—one in agro-resource management and another in toxicology.
Ella Browning
Ella is an ecological researcher based in the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, University of Oxford, UK. Her research focuses on using ecoacoustic approaches to understand species responses to environmental change and nature recovery, with a particular fascination for bats and their use of echolocation. Currently Ella is exploring the use of passive acoustic monitoring for assessing soil health and identifying fauna specific sounds.
Ellen Bradley
Ellen is Co-Director of UK Youth for Nature, a network of 16-35-year-olds from across the UK calling for action on the nature crisis. She is Vice Chair of Trustees of Young Sea Changers Scotland, Ambassador for Zeiss Nature and was previously General Manager of Curlew Action. Ellen is writing and illustrating her first book with Birlinn Publishing which explores some of the extraordinary adaptations of British wildlife. Ellen is also a freelance speaker, writer and wildlife artist.
Ellen Pearce
Ellen is based in North Lancashire and coordinates food economy projects, including a market garden, FarmStart training programme, food hub and community farm. She also coordinates the Northern Food and Farming network which supports a shift to agroecological farming and food systems in the North of England.
Elsa Kent
Elsa is founder of Wilder Warleigh in Devon, which is transforming 480 acres through ecological stewardship. She is creative lead for Glastonbury Nut Farm, and RSPB Farm Wildlife Education Manager. She has led several projects in Kenya, including setting up an environmental festival, and was impact producer for Six Inches of Soil. She recently designed the Food Programme for Reimagining Nature Finance with Oxford University, putting emphasis on farmer stories, seasonality and ecological practices.
Emma Dearnaley
Emma is a lawyer with broad experience spanning a decade as a litigator at a global law firm, plus diverse leadership, legal, policy and advisory roles in government and non-profits. Emma has expertise in bringing strategic litigation and using the law as a tool for change and accountability. Formerly the Legal Director at Good Law Project, Emma is now on a mission to rescue Britain’s rivers as Head of Legal at River Action UK.
Finlay Keiller
Alongside his partner Haley, Finlay runs Seeds of Scotland. Started in 2023 and based in the Highlands, Seeds of Scotland is currently the only farm in Scotland to grow and sell organically certified vegetable, herb and flower seeds. A large part of the work that Seeds of Scotland does is the sourcing, trialling, selecting and evaluating of suitable varieties for Highland growing conditions and bringing these to market.
Fiona Mountain
Fiona is an award-winning novelist, writer and storyteller. She has published six novels and has written for numerous publications including The Sunday Times and Cotswold Life. She writes for Cotswold Seeds and FarmED, where she also organises literature events and works with a team to produce The FarmED Podcast. She is also a bookseller and has presented and chaired sessions at Hay Festival, Oxford Literature Festival and Cheltenham Literature Festival.
Françoise Wemelsfelder
Françoise is a Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare at Scotland’s Rural College in Edinburgh. Her work bridges science and philosophy to explore animal sentience, leading her to pioneer a method called Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) which focuses on the emotional expressivity we can observe in how animals move. Françoise’s main interest is to work with others to implement a holistic understanding of animals and their welfare in farming, veterinary care and research.
Fredrick Otieno
Fredrick is a chemical risk management specialist with over 7 years’ experience. He is Programs Officer at Centre for Environment Justice and Development (CEJAD), a public interest organisation in Kenya, where he leads projects on pesticide risk reduction and mercury elimination working with communities and policy makers. Since 2022, he has coordinated a regional pesticide suicide prevention initiative, working closely with regulators in East and Southern Africa.
Gabriel Kaye
Gabriel is a founder of the Biodynamic Land Trust and their Land Projects Manager. She is also the Biodynamic Association’s Outreach Ambassador. Involved in many aspects of land, farming and biodynamics; she is passionate about access to land for ecological farming. She is committed to healthy food, community and farming for healthy people and planet. Born on a biodynamic farm to her father (the farmer) and mother (market gardener), she has also been involved in biodynamics in France and Ireland.
George Bennett
George of Sandy Lane Farm is an organic farmer, a passionate advocate for sustainable agricultural practices, and a leading voice in the movement towards a more environmentally conscious food system. As a key member of the team behind veg box software platform, GrowingGood, George combines traditional farming wisdom with innovative techniques to promote local food economy and regenerative agriculture that nurtures both the land and the community.
Geetie Singh-Watson
Geetie opened the first certified organic pub in the world in 1998. She grew up in a commune in Herefordshire where she lived a life that considered the impact they were having on the environment and society. She began working in restaurants and loved the trade, but was disillusioned by the lack of sustainability and quality, organic ingredients. Inspired by the first gastro pub, The Eagle, she opened her own place, becoming the founder of the first official organic pub in Britain, The Duke of Cambridge, in London.
George Massoud
George is an architect, educator and cultural worker. He is director at Material Cultures: an interdisciplinary, not-for-profit research, action and design organisation working to address the intersecting issues of climate and social justice in the built environment. They challenge the systems, technologies, supply chains, regulations and materials that make up the construction industry, with the aim of transforming how we build and who we build for.
Georgia Phillips
Georgia is Commercial and Marketing Director at Soil Association Certification, which delivers trusted solutions with nature for people and planet through industry-leading certification, assurance and training. Georgia also brings experience from Soil Association Certification licensee, Pukka Herbs, where she led on impact and sustainability to deliver their impact framework, climate and farming programmes. She cares deeply about the critical links between a healthy planet and healthy people.
Georgie Bray
Georgie has been managing The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ Hope Farm since 2018. The farm has been trialling nature-friendly farming techniques for 25 years, with the key objective to increase biodiversity through habitat creation on a conventional arable farm without impacting profitability. Georgie is BASIS qualified in Crop Protection and has a Masters in Zoology. She grew up on her family’s arable farm, where she lives and helps with conservation, diversification and grants management.
Georgina Cockett
Georgina is Project Co-ordinator for Land Use Plus and Sussex Grazed at the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. Based in Sussex, she works with farmers and deer managers to support nature-friendly food production and build local markets for meat, including wild venison. Sussex Grazed promotes direct sales and provides guidance to help producers set up businesses, market their products and show how grazing and deer management support restoring their local landscape.
Georgina Edwards
Georgina has worked at Sustain’s Sustainable Farming Campaign since August 2024, advocating for a transition to agroecological farming that delivers sustainable, healthy, and affordable food and good livelihoods. She previously worked in research, policy and advocacy in the third sector, campaigning for better support for rural and community co-operatives. A long-time food and farming enthusiast, she is an allotment grower and volunteers at a community farm, edible garden and farmers market.
Georgina Grimes
Georgina is Head of Responsible Business for Yeo Valley, leading their approach to farming, climate, nature and ethics. She works to create positive environmental and human impact at scale within the supply chain, collating proof and evidence of the benefits and sharing this data to influence wider policy change across the food system.
Giulia Nicolini
Giulia is a social scientist working on the intersection of food, environment, culture and society. She is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, and a PhD candidate in Anthropology, based at the Centre for Rural Policy Research, at the University of Exeter. Her PhD research looks at how taste and demand for seaweed as a food are changing in the UK.
Graeme Willis
Graeme has worked on farming policy for The Countryside Charity (CPRE) since 2013 and sits on Defra’s Farming and Countryside Programme Forum. He contributed to CPRE’s Farming on the Edge report on peri-urban farms. He has also worked on farmland classification, procurement, the loss of small farms, soil management, and council farms. He holds a Masters in Environment, Science and Society and was a lecturer and researcher at Anglia Ruskin and Essex universities. He grew up in Cheshire working on family farms.
Hannah Blitzer
Hannah is a Senior Policy Officer at the Soil Association. Prior to this, Hannah spent five years working in UK, US and international organisations on farming, climate, energy, and human rights law and policy. Her LLM and PhD centred on the connection between agri-environmental policy and rights-based environmental justice. Hannah’s expertise ranges from agri-environment schemes to decarbonisation and resilience to chemicals regulation. She is a Non-Executive Director of Zero Hour and GM Freeze.
Hannah Lamb
Hannah is Co-Director and Head Grower of Yorkshire Edible Flowers. Based in Doncaster, the farm grows edible flowers that are sold to bakers and chefs across the UK and runs a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) veg box and cut flower subscription scheme for their local community. Hannah is a Board member of CSA Network UK.
Hannah Padgett
Hannah is the South West Regional Coordinator for Landmatch England and has been engaged in the regenerative food and farming world for over ten years. She uses her background in collaborative design and community engagement to support new entrant farmers to overcome barriers around solidarity and land justice. Hannah supports land seekers and land owners to build strong working relationships for successful land matches across the South West of England.
Hannah Thorogood
Hannah farms The Inkpot Organic Farm, is a regional manager for Pasture for Life and has been teaching permaculture and regenerative agriculture for 20 years. Her teachings and consultancy have helped countless people set off on their journeys into farming and helps existing farmers to renew and refocus on what they want whilst improving their productivity, biodiversity and human connections
.
Harriet Bell
Harriet is regenerative farming lead at nutritional doorstep delivery company Riverford, where she works with farmers to develop agroforestry systems, leads on work to help test and implement sustainable farming practices for the future and generally obsesses about farming through climate catastrophe. She has a Masters in leadership for sustainable development and has spent the past 15 years working with pioneering sustainability-led farmers in the South West on practice and policy.
Harry Dyer
Harry is the co-founder of Shrub, a wholesaler working directly with mainly organic UK farms and market gardens. Supplying some of the UK’s best restaurants, Shrub is built on the principles of seasonality, transparency, quality and traceability; commodities in short supply in the food industry, but in high demand in professional kitchens. Shrub champions integrity and calls for a food culture revolution to bring us closer to what we eat, and more sensitive about how it gets onto our plates.
Hatty Richards
Hatty is the New Entrant and Training Project Development and Policy Coordinator at the Landworkers’ Alliance. Her work is focussed on building collaborative projects and initiatives to address the challenges new entrants face within landwork. Hatty grew up grafting on a mixed small-holding, she’s also worked out on the fields on various small-scale horticulture operations.
Hazel Healy
Hazel is the Editor of award-winning UK investigations outlet DeSmog. She leads a team of journalists specialising in stories that expose who is blocking action to protect climate and nature – and why.
Heleen Bos
Heleen has an MSc in Plant Breeding from Wageningen University, as well as 25+ years of experience in seed production and sales, and sustainable agriculture in developing countries. Since 2007, she has led the organic programme at Rijk Zwaan, promoting organic vegetable varieties contributing to resilient food systems. Rijk Zwaan turns opportunities in the organic sector into sustainable partnerships.
Helen Browning
Helen farms on an organic farm in Wiltshire with dairy, beef, pigs, cereals, agroforestry and small-scale horticulture. She has been Chief Executive of the Soil Association since 2011. She is a Commissioner and trustee of the Food Farming and Countryside Commission and has had several roles in agri-politics over the years, including the Government’s Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food (‘the Curry Commission’). Helen was awarded an OBE in 1998 for her services to organic farming.
Helen Bynum
Helen is a Farm Wildlife Advisor at Suffolk Wildlife Trust (SWT). SWT farm advice sits within the Wilder Landscapes Team, meaning Helen works at various scales from advising individual farmers, to working with farmer clusters and supporting landscape-scale projects. Helen worked in academia and as a writer before joining SWT.
Helen Keys
Helen is a farmer from County Tyrone and one of the team behind the Growing Innovation Network, a Food Farming and Countryside Commission project supporting farmers to drive change. She founded Source Grow, The Veg Collective, and along with her husband, Mallon Linen. Helen is also a steering group member for the Nature Friendly Farming Network.
Henk Kieft
Henk was born into farming families in the Netherlands in 1949. He studied at Wageningen University, and worked in many countries on Rural Development and Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA), a concept he co-developed around 35 years ago. From 2000 – 2015, Henk was active in the National Rural Development Networks of the EU and has worked on optimising Nutrient Use Efficiency in Dutch dairy farms. From 2005 he started exploring farming techniques from a Quantum Biology perspective.
Henry Little
Henry has been a student at Ruskin Mill college for two years. This is a special educational needs college, with a craft and land based curriculum. He has been completing qualifications during his time at the college, and is inspired by the curriculum of land work and craft work. Henry is particularly interested in becoming a farm contractor in the future. His next aspiration at the college is to complete a tractor license, and to take this skill into future employment.
Holly Purdey
Holly is a tenant farmer on Exmoor who supports the work of the Nature Friendly Farming Network as Vice Chair for England, and is a Trustee for Somerset Wildlife Trust. Her farm is majority cattle and sheep alongside fruit trees and pastured poultry. The farm delivers educational sessions for schools and community groups, and also supports a Community Supported Agriculture vegetable field. Holly is a dairy farmer’s daughter, who previously worked in conservation before returning to full time farming in 2016.
Holly Silvester
Holly is a commercial vegetable and seed grower, based at East Neuk Market Garden in Fife. She also works part time for the Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty Programme as Future Resilience Seed Coordinator, facilitating the programme’s Crowd Breeding Project and inspiring others to explore the radical possibilities of seed.
Hugo Harrison
Hugo is a cook, writer and grower based between Suffolk and London. He’s spent time in the kitchens of Chez Panisse, Coombeshead Farm and The River Cafe, as well as working on the opening of a small restaurant on a farm in 2023. He currently assists Jamie Oliver in the development and production of his books, digital campaigns and TV shows and writes the Substack Salt and the Earth, a farm-to-table guide to flavour.
Huw Foulkes
Huw is the founder of Pentrefelin Dairy and Pentrefelin Farm in North Wales, a regenerative mixed farm producing milk, beef, eggs, and organic fruit and veg in collaboration with Smithy Farm. He recently opened an on-site farm shop showcasing the farm’s produce and is developing Pentrefelin as a model for sustainable, community-focused food production.
HyoJin Park
HyoJin is a multimedia storyteller and strategist, straddling the messy space between activism and journalism. At A Growing Culture, HyoJin leads the Press Programme, bridging peasant, Indigenous and small-holder farmer communities with the media space to shift the narrative landscape of our food systems. In her free time, she has been studying herbal medicine.
Ian Marshall
Ian is Head of Business Development and Policy at the Centre for Advanced Sustainable Energy, Queen’s University Belfast, connecting research, industry, and government on renewable energy and the circular bioeconomy. Previously at QUB’s Institute for Global Food Security, he advanced agri-food research. In 2018, he became the first Ulster Unionist elected to Seanad Éireann; the upper house of the Irish Government. A former President of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, and the Agri-Food Strategy Board, Ian holds an MSc in Agri-Food Business Development, and is a farmer.
India Hamilton
India is a food systems specialist and founder of HYPHA Consulting based in Jersey. A post-graduate researcher with over twenty years of experience, she is committed to advancing food system transformation and regenerative economics within food and farming. She played a key role as a founding board member of SCOOP, a Jersey-based sustainable cooperative, and most recently developed the REGEN Gathering. She actively represents Smallholders in rural policy frameworks, contributing to Jersey’s 40-year food resilience strategy.
Isobel Talks
Isobel has worked with the Landworkers’ Alliance since 2021 on projects including the New Entrant Support Scheme pilot and the Experts in Your Field project. She now facilitates the Agroecology Research Collaboration, supporting research that centres agroecological farmers and landworkers. Isobel also teaches Environmental Education at Oxford, promoting radical pedagogical responses to the climate crisis. She loves birdwatching, sea swimming and cultivating mushrooms.
Jack Feeny
Jack is a chef, grower and founder of No Mise En Plastic (NMEP), a C.I.C. providing free online resources to help professional chefs play their part in the transition to an agroecological food system. After eight years of working in professional kitchens in London and Devon, Jack completed an MSc in regenerative food and farming. He now works as a grower at Birch Farm. His passion lies in reconnecting chefs and growers, showcasing the flavour potential of perennial vegetables, and food forests.
Jack Peppiatt
Jack is a grower whose work focuses on cultivating complex, resilient ecosystems that can serve as models for agroecological food production. He has worked at the Center for Alternative Technology, various permaculture projects around the UK, a syntropic farm in Spain, and on NMEPlastic’s Today’s Menu project. For the last three seasons, he’s been a grower at Birch Farm, a Natural Farming project in North Devon, where he has continued to explore his interest in polycultures, agroforestry, seed saving, and perennial vegetables.
Jack Scott
Jack runs his own award-winning vegetable business that supplies local supply chains, and also works for The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South-East, running a farm cluster and a water abstraction group. Jack won the BBC Countryfile Young Countryside Champion in 2023. Jack’s produce is all grown chemical-free with an approach that enriches the soil. Recently, Jack has begun returning vegetables to the historic estate Quex Park, continuing his nature-friendly practice while scaling up and adopting a whole farm approach.
Jack Thompson
Jack is a writer and journalist specialising in food and climate, based in Dakar, Senegal. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the BBC and the Associated Press. He also consults for TABLE, a food systems platform.
Jackie Bridgen
Jackie is a tenant smallholder and permaculturist, living with her husband Neil, in Wiltshire – 2 miles from the land they have rented for 25 years, where they breed Oxford Down sheep and run a market garden. Working as non-residential, non-landowning farmers for a quarter of a century has provided many challenges. These are exacerbated and expanded by the coming of ‘later mid life!’ Jackie is now engaged in writing, speaking and sharing on the challenges of older landless landworkers.
Jade Bashford
Jade has worked on community control of food systems for 35 years, helping to establish the Community Supported Agriculture model in the UK, planning for local food economies and introducing new models. She currently works for the Real Farming Trust as a Programme Coordinator for UK delivery and research projects addressing food poverty, agroecology and social inclusion.
James Allen
James is a first-generation Organic farmer who, with his wife Katie, regeneratively graze their cattle and sheep at Great Cotmarsh Farm, with nature as a key stakeholder. In 2025, they built a classroom and traditional vegetable micro tannery on the farm. As well as producing fully traceable leather from cattle hides, Cotmarsh Tannery CIC will be part of the fibre education story told to visiting students. The tannery will also act as a national tannery hub to support other micro tanneries.
James Binning
James is co-founder of design collective Assemble and Common Treasures, an organisation that brings together practical responses to contemporary challenges in rural communities. He works with the Ecological Land Cooperative on housing strategies for agroecological farm sites, and with Civic Square on design as a tool for just social, environmental and economic transition.
Jamie Feilden
Jamie is the founder and Co-CEO of an expanding charity transforming the lives of vulnerable children through farming, family and therapy. Responsible for the charity’s strategic direction across its seven livestock farms, he is passionate about regenerative farming across all operations. He is committed to giving as many children as possible the chance to experience the transformative impact of the farms, with many neurodivergent young people going on to become ambassadors, apprentices, and farmworkers.
Jan Palmer
Jan is a community level organiser who has been involved in the successful campaign against plans to build an industrial megafarm in Norfolk. Following widespread public outcry and over 15,000 objections, the planning application for the farm was rejected in a landmark decision that could shape the future of industrial farming in Britain and bolster councils and rural communities in their fight against harmful environmental practices in their areas.
Jane Cooper
Jane, author of The Lost Flock, began farming Boreray sheep in Orkney in 2013. In 2021, she established a Community in Orkney of five farmers. Now a co-operative of nine farmers on five of Orkney’s isles, they produce mutton, wool, skin and horn products. In 2024, exacerbated with the 120 mile journey to the nearest abattoir including a ferry crossing subject to weather related delays, she became determined to find a way to have higher welfare on-farm slaughter for the sheep and to maximise by-products.
Jasmine Rose Lucraft-Mee
Jasmine is a biodynamic grower and horticulture tutor at Ruskin Mill College. During her many years of tutoring and working with young adults with special educational needs, Jasmine has experienced the therapeutic benefits that working on the land can have on people, giving them a sense of purpose, connection and gaining skills to take into the wider community.
Jasminka Ilicic
Jasminka is a Biodynamic herb and flower grower, phytotherapist, and former corporate marketing expert. After two decades in global marketing, she has since 2007 co-managed OPG Biomara, a 6.5 ha organic farm. Guided by Alex Podolinski, she adopted biodynamic practices in 2010. Trained across Europe, Australia, and China, she unites practical farming, phytotherapy, and holistic soil care rooted in Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic philosophy.
Jason O’Rourke
Jason is Headteacher of Washingborough Academy, Lincolnshire, where food education is at the heart of learning. A leading advocate for sensory food education, he co-founded TastEd with Bee Wilson and has advised the UK Government and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on school food. His award-winning work connects children to healthy, sustainable diets through growing, cooking, and tasting.
Jayne Arnold
Jayne is the co-founder of Oxton Organics, a 5-hectare farm in Worcestershire, founded in 1987. With a wonderful team, Jayne runs a local box scheme, grows vegetables, fruit, and has a small flock of sheep. In recent years she has experimented with bio stimulants and under-sowing crops. Oxton’s ethos is to encourage diversity above and below ground. Observing the improving soil health over the past few years has stoked even more passion for organic growing.
Jayne Kirkham
Jayne is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Truro and Falmouth. Previously, she worked as a Trade Union and Employment Rights solicitor, representing workers injured at work. After moving to Cornwall 20 years ago, Jayne was elected as a Councillor in 2018 where she built a strong record of community service before becoming an MP in July 2024. Jayne has family connections in farming from Oxfordshire and Northants — her grandfather was a farmer, and several relatives still are.
JC Niala
JC is Deputy Director and Head of Research, Teaching and Collections at the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford. An allotment historian and land researcher working across Kenya, India and the UK, she explores how farming histories shape sustainable futures. Her project Milking It examines milk, colonialism and heritage, while Colonial Standards investigates how scientific instruments enforced control. A third-generation organic farmer, she focuses on agroforestry and regeneration.
Jed Soleiman
Jed is a PhD student at the University of Oxford, and a Soils Technical Lead and Knowledge Exchange Coordinator for The Centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping. He is passionate about nature recovery, exploring differing land uses to enable this in the UK through a soil ecological lens. With a particular interest in regenerative agriculture and rewilding, Jed previously worked to understand mycorrhizal community responses at the Knepp Estate, and is now exploring herbal leys diversities and whole soil community responses at FarmED.
Jen Hunter
Jen is a regenerative eco-farmer who focuses on multi-purpose sheep genetics, blade shearing, specialist fibre events and wool schools – welcoming new-entrants, students placements, shearing events to help supply traceable, single origin, fine, colourful British wool yarns, felts, fabrics, clothing and accessories.
Jen Lucey
Jen is Deputy Director of the Nature-based Solutions Initiative and Senior Researcher at Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University. Her research explores nature-based solutions to transform agricultural landscapes for biodiversity, resilience, and food security. She leads the Agricultural Resilience Impact and Innovation Hub, which aims to co-create research and innovation by integrating interdisciplinary academic expertise with farmer knowledge.
Jenna Hegarty
Jenna is responsible for the Nature Friendly Farming Network’s (NFFN) UK policy work. Through engagement with policy makers, farming stakeholders and wider civil society actors, Jenna supports positive change in farming policy and legislation. The NFFN’s farmer membership shapes the organisation’s policy priorities, bringing vital experience on what works for farmers and the environment to policy decision-making. Previously, Jenna worked for The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with responsibility for a range of food and farming policy areas.
Jennifer Clapp
Jennifer is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Her most recent book is Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why it Matters (MIT Press, 2025). Professor Clapp is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).
Jenny Slaughter
Jenny has endured a lifetime of obsession about what to eat for the optimum health of people and planet. The search continues, but her current hunch is that the answer may lie in the soil. She is a founder member of Grow & Graze, The Eighth Day Wholefoods shop and restaurant in Manchester, is involved in the Calderdale Ecological Land Trust, is a dietitian, a Director of Burnley Food Links, and a co-worker with Pennine Cropshare. She is also a Mum, Grandma, Gardener, Cook and occasional blogger.
Jesse Noon
Jesse is a director of Myco Manchester, a mushroom farm and nature education co-operative in Manchester focusing on land and ecological justice. Outside of Myco, they are active in abolitionist campaigning. In the past, this involved supporting incarcerated queer people. Their current work is focused on building community skills for emergency response and civil contingencies.
Jessica Bockler
Jessica is a psychologist, artist and co-founder of Alef Trust, a social enterprise in education and community development. She is research lead for Calmer Farmer, supporting farmer wellbeing and food systems renewal. She also stewards Nurturing the Fields of Change, a global network for social and ecological transformation. Her passion is weaving creativity, embodiment and spirituality into how we care for land, food and community.
Jill Timms
Jill has been investigating sustainability in horticulture for over two decades. She is now working on the DEFRA/UKRI Project, the Flower Growing Collective and presenting at the Panel: Building Short Supply Chains for British Flowers. Jill is an Associate Professor at Surrey University, co-founder of the Sustainable Flowers Research Project and founding Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability – working with farmers and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises to find solutions to work productively in climate crisis.
Jim McAdam
Jim is an agricultural scientist with responsibility for the agroforestry programme in Northern Ireland. He was chairman of the Farm Woodland Forum and is a director and founder member of the Irish Agroforestry Forum. He promotes agroforestry and tree planting on farms throughout Ireland, has conducted research into and monitored agri-environment schemes, and has participated in nature-based water quality initiatives. He led a project on the impact of climate change on carbon in Lough Neagh.
Jimmy Woodrow
Jimmy is Chief Executive of Pasture for Life, a non-profit helping transition the UK livestock industry to practices that promote human, animal and planetary health. He founded and advises CLEAR, the consortium working towards holistic and transparent data and labelling practices and is a trustee of Woodlands Farm in London and the Wild Camel Protection Foundation. Jimmy’s early career was spent in financial services and food business in an operational and advisory capacity.
Jo Banner
Jo is the founder and director of The Descendants Project. She uses her degrees in communications to honor the legacy of enslaved people while defending descendant communities. Jo is a fierce advocate for environmental justice, working to eliminate pollution from grain to petrochemicals. She represents frontline communities in global spaces like the United Nations Global Plastics Treaty negotiations, highlighting the health toll of plastic production on Black communities and other fenceline residents.
Jo Harper
Jo worked in Public Health for 35 years before becoming a late entrant to farming ten years ago. Having observed the re-introduction of viticulture to the UK four decades earlier, Jo was particularly interested in exploring the possibilities of novel crops. Jo became one of the early pioneers of Tea growing, establishing Dartmoor Estate Tea, one of the UK’s first field grown, low input tea farms in 2015.
Jo Poulton
Jo is Co-Head Grower at Sims Hill Shared Harvest, a 6-acre market garden and field scale Community Supported Agriculture scheme in Bristol that supplies agroecological vegshares to over 170 households across Bristol weekly. Sims Hill also offers workshare places for those who would like to exchange their time for veg and a Soil Connections Program for people affected by the asylum system to come together on the land and share meals whilst connecting with one another.
Joe Collins
Joe is a Senior Research Associate for the Earth Rover Programme, and manages the Conservation Agriculture Systems Research Experiment sponsored by BASE-UK at Harper Adams University. His PhD research involved research on agronomy, soil science, economics, and greenhouse gas emissions in conservation agriculture. He holds an MSc in Sustainable Crop Production from the University of Warwick and has over 10 years of experience working in the agricultural industry in the UK and abroad.
Joe Yates
Joe is Co-Director of the Agriculture, Nutrition & Health Science-Policy Platform, a global community of over 13,000 researchers, practitioners and policymakers in 160 countries. Based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Joe’s research looks at plastics in the food system, exploring political economy, human and planetary health issues. He is a member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty.
Johanna Korndorfer
Johanna is Co-Director of Exeter Seed Bank, a community interest company which has been providing activities around the craft of seed-saving since 2021. She has an eclectic background in the arts, heritage, and conservation sectors. From 2006-2013, she was the Learning Manager for the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) exhibition programmes. She is an enthusiastic seed-saving newbie.
Johanna McTiernan
Johanna is a certified embodied meditation instructor, Realisation Process™ teacher, nature connection facilitator and co-founder of Earthbound coaching. She is co-lead on the Calmer Farmer programme, where she integrates her experience in nature connection and wellbeing. With a history of working in the regenerative food sector, she was a founder member of The Handmade Bakery, an award-winning Community Supported Bakery, and heavily involved in the UK’s real bread revival in the early 2000s.
John Atkinson
John is a Lake District farmer and dry stone waller with extensive experience completing walls across northern England. Working with several different geological stone types and diverse techniques, he has developed a deep understanding of traditional walling craft. With twenty-five years of experience at the National Trust, John has trained numerous people who now practice dry stone walling around the world, helping to preserve and share this essential rural skill.
John Pawsey
John is a fourth generation farmer and a Director of Shimpling Park Farms, farming 650 hectares in Suffolk. John farms an additional 980 hectares for neighbouring farmers under various agreements. All the farms are organic, with the first farm being converted in 1999. Since then, the farm’s soils and biodiversity have improved alongside profitable food production. Diversifications on the farm include environmental schemes, commercial and domestic rentals and renewable energy projects.
John Redhead
John is a spatial ecologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. He has worked as a research scientist for the past 15 years and specialises in using mapped data and computer models. His research focuses on understanding the challenges of making agriculture more sustainable in a changing world, and on identifying solutions that can help us to protect both the environment and the benefits that humans derive from it.
John Taylor
John has over 20 years of experience growing organic vegetables for the UK retail and wholesale markets across Scotland, Norfolk and Nottinghamshire. In 2015, he joined Pollybell Farms, a family-owned estate growing organic vegetables, cereals and integrating cover crops for fertility building throughout the rotation. He has been integral in refocusing the farming businesses on delivering consistent quality and availability to their customers to grow the organic market for brassicas and leeks.
Jon Young
Jon is a nature connection researcher, mentor, naturalist, wildlife tracker, author, and storyteller whose 40+ years of work have influenced tens of thousands worldwide. Mentored by elders, including Tom Brown, Jr., he has authored seminal works like What the Robin Knows and Coyote’s Guide to Connecting to Nature, appeared in documentaries, and received the Champion of Environmental Education Award for his global impact.
Josh Newbury
Josh is the Labour MP for Cannock Chase in Staffordshire and has been a member of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee since October 2024. Josh gained an interest in agriculture after researching on-farm anaerobic digestion whilst working in the energy sector. Josh came into Parliament keen to focus on farming policy, joining the NFU’s scheme for MPs as well as the Committee. Josh’s interests include nature-friendly farming, soil health, diversification and rural development.
Josiah Judson
Josiah is a soil scientist and farming advisor at the Soil Association. He contributes to European research, developing advanced soil sensing and monitoring techniques and new materials for training soil advisors. His own research looks at how soil benefits of agroforestry interact and how they can be maximised in different landscapes.
Josiah Meldrum
Josiah is co-founder of Hodmedod, a business that exists to support the transition to an agroecological food system. Recognising their transformative role in diets and farming, Hodmedod aims to put pulses at the centre of agricultural rotations and in the middle of plates. With peas, lentils and beans as a starting point, Hodmedod now works with complete arable rotations and dozens of species – from annual seeds and grains to perennial harvests of nuts and fruits from agroforestry.
Julia Eriksen
Julia is an associate solicitor in Leigh Day’s human rights department, predominantly supporting the environment team on judicial review challenges with a particular focus on climate change litigation.
Julia Kirby-Smith
Julia is Executive Director of Better Food Traders, a non-profit CIC supporting 210+ sustainable food traders, and empowering farmers, communities and local authorities to rebuild an independent, sustainable food sector. Julia is also Chair of Eating Better, an alliance of 70+ organisations working to reduce meat and dairy consumption in the UK.
Julia Wright
Julia works at the Centre for Agroecology at Coventry University. With a background in international agricultural development, she undertook her PhD at Wageningen University on transition to more ecological farming and food systems in Cuba. Since then, she has developed a transdisciplinary research programme on Subtle Agroecologies, which explores the supersensible dimensions of farming and nature relationships, grounded in the lived experiences of humans working with the land over millennia.
Julie Baber
Julie has a small farm in her native Somerset where she raises traditional breed sheep for wool, slow grown hogget, and conservation grazing. She also writes freelance articles for the Sustainable Food Trust and other organisations.
Justin Howard-Sneyd
Justin is an International wine consultant, regenerative viticulture advocate, entrepreneur and wine communicator, as well as owner of tiny Roussillon estate Domaine of the Bee. Justin consults a number of businesses around the world, mostly on buying and commercial performance. He is also a Trustee of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation.
Jyoti Fernandes
Jyoti is an advocate for agroecology, food and land justice on behalf of the Landworkers Alliance and La Via Campesina – a global social movement representing 200 million peasant farmers and indigenous peoples. She is part of a collective running a small agroecological small holding and land justice activist centre based in Dorset, UK called the Land Skills Hub at Fivepenny Farm. You can follow her work telling Stories of Hope and Revolution @jyotifernandes23.
Kai Lange
Kai draws his inspiration from working with nature. He is a biodynamic farmer and grower since 1985 who trained in Germany, worked in Denmark, and has lived in the UK since 2000. Currently working for the Biodynamic College, he is passionate about sharing his love for farming and growing through education and mentoring. He has developed practices to start a dialogue with nature, consciously engaging all senses, intuition, inspiration and imagination; together with his wife Lucy at HORTUS Heart.
Kandake Makonnen
Marion ‘Kandake’ Makonnen has over 30 years’ experience in herbal medicine and was introduced to the power of traditional herbal medicine by her grandmother. She has travelled and lived amongst the Rastafari community in Jamaica and the Dogomba people of Western Africa.
Kapka Kassabova
Kapka is a poet and writer of narrative prose. At the core of her work is a quest for transformative encounter with places and people. In the last decade, she has created a body of work which organically grew into ‘the Balkan quartet’. Each book dives deep into a region of the southern Balkans in and bordering Bulgaria. These are rich human and natural ecosystems scarred by political trauma. The first pair are Border (2017) and To The Lake (2020). They explore collective histories. The final pair are Elixir (2023) and Anima (2024). They explore how humans, plants and animals are bound in a vitalising interdependence.
Karena Batstone
Karena is a Bristol-based landscape designer, grower, and curator of the Bristol Palestine Film Festival. Of Palestinian heritage, she explores connections between land, culture, and belonging. She grows za’atar as an act of remembrance and solidarity and has organised trips to Palestine to build connections through land and storytelling.
Karl Franklin
Karl is a first-generation sheep farmer. He is a qualified chef by trade and worked his way up the ranks in the cheffing world. He then left that all behind to chase the dream of becoming a farmer. Within ten years, Karl has gone from having twelve lambs of his own to being the head shepherd for a farm looking after 500 ewes. He takes you along, showing everything that comes with the farming reality on his Instagram account, @The_Pretend_Farmer.
Kat Zscharnagk
Kat is a Senior Change Designer in the UK and Europe food team at the international sustainability non-profit, Forum for the Future. She uses systems thinking to support food and farming businesses and multi-stakeholder collaborations that imagine and drive change towards a more just and regenerative food system. Kat leads projects on scaling regenerative agriculture, local routes to market, and imagining the future of UK orchards.
Kate Bradshaw
Kate is the Director of Marketing and Operations for Pasture for Life (PfL), responsible for growing the reach and team of Pasture for Life in whatever effective way she can. She is also an accredited executive coach and certified PfL farmer. Coaching for over 15 years, she works in 1:1 and group leadership contexts, whilst still managing to farm with her life partner, Kathryn.
Kate Collyns
Kate runs Grown Green, a two hectare organic market garden in Wiltshire started in 2010, and co-ordinates the OGA Training Network programme, which was piloted in 2025. She has also written books on organic growing and gardening. How To Start a Market Garden is due to be published in February 2026.
Kate Raworth
Kate is an ecological economist and creator of the Doughnut – a vision for 21st-century prosperity that meets everyone’s needs within the planet’s means. Her best-selling book Doughnut Economics has been translated into 20+ languages and inspired audiences from the UN to Extinction Rebellion. She co-founded Doughnut Economics Action Lab and previously worked with the UN, Oxfam, and in Zanzibar. She is also the Ringmaster of Doughnut Economics Circus.
Kathryn Harper
Kathryn, co-founder of Dartmoor Estate Tea, has had a lifelong passion for biodiversity and landscape function, studying both botany and ecology. With a previous professional background in education and the arts, she leads the businesses public engagement, education and training programmes. Kathryn works with clients ranging from individual consumers to national organisations offering education and site specific ecological consultancy.
Katie Allen
Katie is an organic farmer at Great Cotmarsh Farm, Wiltshire. The farm produces lamb and beef in a 100% pastoral system and is implementing projects to improve soil health, increase biodiversity and embrace agroforestry. She creates award-winning knitwear using the fleeces from the flock and cultivates colour by growing plant dyes. She has developed a beautiful classroom space on the farm to engage young designers and help connect their approach to circular design with soil health.
Katie Hastings
Katie is the Wales Coordinator for the Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty Programme, working with farmers and growers to build a more resilient seed system here in the UK. As part of this work she has co-founded a Wales-based seed-selling cooperative called the Wales Seed Hub. She facilitates the Llafur Ni network in which farmers work together to revive rare Welsh oats. She is currently doing a Churchill Fellowship looking at how cooperative models can transform the UK seed system.
Katrin Hochberg
Katrin leads the Farming and Land Use Department at the Soil Association charity, working closely with the Soil Association’s Organic Producer Board and organic sector development initiatives. Coming from a farming background, she has established regional market development and training programmes for organic farmers, managed an international standard-setting organisation, managed retail accounts for an organic meat business and worked as a local food consultant.
Keith Tyrell
Keith is Head of Global Strategy at the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention (CPSP) at Edinburgh University. Over a career spanning three decades, he has worked with governments, companies, farmers’ groups and civil society to tackle health and environmental problems caused by pesticide use. Working with partners in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, he has supported thousands of growers to successfully move away from Highly Hazardous Pesticides. Prior to joining CPSP, Keith was Director of Pesticide Action Network UK.
Kiloran O’Leary
Kiloran joined Sustain in January 2023 as Programme Officer for the Bridging the Gap programme, which aims to demonstrate ways to enable people experiencing low income to access organic fruit and veg. Kiloran has a background in growing, education and food partnership coordination. She previously worked as co-director at OrganicLea and Story Garden Manager at Global Generation.
Lauren Haley
Lauren is a grower at Macc Market Garden, a teacher, a community organiser and a campaigner. She is an advocate for sustainability, nature connection and building pathways to land based livelihoods.
Lawrence Woodward
Lawrence is a director and co-founder of Beyond GM and Whole Health Agriculture. A founder and long-time director of the Organic Research Centre (ORC), he has spent over 30 years advising and speaking on the principles and methods of organic agriculture to a wide range of organisations. In 2001, he was awarded an O.B.E. for services to organic farming, recognising his pivotal role in the strategic and practical development of the organic sector in the UK and internationally.
Leah Salm
Leah weaves together two worlds: yoga and food systems research. As a yoga practitioner, she invites people to feel grounded, embodied and at ease. As a researcher, she explores where food, health, biodiversity and inequality intersect. Though they may seem separate, both paths share a commitment to connection – within ourselves, with each other, and with the living world. She works at the meeting point of care, justice and transformation.
Lee Holdstock
Lee manages a range of trade and regulatory projects for Soil Association Certification – the UK’s biggest organic certifier. Benefiting from over 25 years of experience supporting the organic sector, he is helping hundreds of businesses build capability in marketing, communications, supply chain, and navigate the changing regulatory landscape.
Leonardo Faedo
Leonardo is an Agronomist and Research Scientist at the Centre of Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), Coventry University, a member of the Biodynamic Farming Research Group and Editor of the Brazilian Journey of Agroecology. He is developing multidisciplinary research on environmental practices, agroecology and health; agroecological farming innovation; and biodiversity, ecology and society.
Leonie Nimmo
Leonie works with the Landworkers’ Alliance and Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees on the Palestine Solidarity Twinning Project, a fledgling partnership under which solidarity, support and friendships have flourished. In her day job she is the Executive Director of GM Freeze, a group campaigning against test tube techno-fixes for our broken food system, advocating instead for food sovereignty and agroecology.
Lily Farmer
Lily is the Program Director at the MAZI project, a charity empowering Bristol’s marginalised 16-25 year olds through food. Lily uses over a decade of experience setting up and running landed kitchen projects to fight food inequality and support farmers. Lily is driven by the belief that to focus on increasing a community’s access to local fruit and vegetables is to change the direction of our food future to a more sustainable, secure and equitable one.
Lily McGuinness
Lily is a member of FLAME, the youth branch of the LWA. Whilst studying Geography with Forestry she carried out her undergraduate dissertation on microplastics in agriculture. The project compared conventional plastic films to biodegradable ones and their effects on soil health indicators. She has since continued her interest in soil science as a greenhouse gas field technician working on paludiculture sites
Lily O’Mara
Lily is a climate justice campaigner in the Climate and Nature Emergency team at Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming and 2025 Bertha Challenge Fellow where she works to expose the polluting and undemocratic practices of agribusinesses linked to factory farming in the UK. Lily was part of the core team of NGOs that supported the a community in Norfolk in securing the landmark refusal of one of Europe’s largest proposed factory farms on climate grounds in April 2025.
Lindsay Whistance
Lindsay is Senior Livestock Researcher at the Organic Research Centre. Her research interests include behaviour, welfare, human-animal-relationships, and ecologically resilient systems which promote ‘a life worth living’ for farm animals. She is currently investigating the role of trees in temperature regulation, body maintenance benefits and their nutritional and medicinal opportunities, as well as methods of feeding and processing tree fodder.
Lisa Norton
Lisa is a senior scientist in the Land Use Group at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, where she has worked as a plant and landscape ecologist for twenty-five years. Her research focuses on monitoring and management of landscapes and she works closely with social and economic scientists and stakeholders in transdisciplinary approaches towards biodiversity and human friendly management of farmland.
Loretta Bosence
Loretta is a landscape researcher, circular economy designer and co-founder at Local Works Studio, focusing on the strategic and hands-on, creative use of bioregional materials and processes. Local Works Studio recently led a farm-based research project, Ag.Lab., alongside academic partners at the Centre for Rural Policy Research at the University of Exeter, investigating the potential for making building materials on farms using food crop byproducts.
Lorienne Whittle
Lorienne works at Nattergal, leading Boothby farm through the development phase of Landscape Recovery. Growing up in rural Lincolnshire inspired Lorienne’s love of the outdoors. A BSc Ecology and MSc Primate Conservation ensued, deepening her connection with nature and understanding of our impact upon it. Lorienne is a qualified teacher, has worked in international conservation, ran a citizen science project and helped establish a conservation training programme at the Woodland Trust.
Lorna Rees
Lorna is a multidisciplinary Live Artist who makes innovative work for the outdoors. She tours nationally and internationally with performance and sound inspired by earth science, landscape, the environment and folk. Her work includes installations on cloudscapes, geology and forestry, but sometimes she is the (self-appointed) High Priestess of Pop. Lorna is co-founder of Dorset-based Gobbledegook Theatre, is Associate Artist for Inside Out Dorset Festival and Co-Chair of Outdoor Arts UK.
Louise Day
Louise runs New Sheepfold Farm in North Yorkshire with her husband, Mark, blending traditional beef and sheep farming with native and rare breeds. She champions local food and sustainable farming through award-winning projects, including luxury farm-stay accommodation and an innovative vending shop supplying home-reared beef and lamb. Passionate about food provenance and education, Louise promotes rare breed and native produce to the wider community.
Lucy Antal
Lucy is Communities Manager and Lead for Food Justice at Foodrise with 25 years’ experience in food and sustainability issues across England, including food surplus, food growing, food education, food enterprise, food access and food for health. She is the founding director of Alchemic Kitchen CIC which runs the Queen of Greens mobile greengrocer. Lucy has contributed to numerous academic papers and campaign reports. She was crowned Community Champion at the 2021 BBC Food and Farming Awards.
Lucy Williamson
Lucy, award-winning Registered Nutritionist and former Vet, founded The Gut Project to share evidence-based nutrition through soil, food, and the gut microbiome. A passionate advocate for our climate-positive farmers and growers, she is an approved Educator and sought after speaker. Her first book, A Handbook for Serving Health, will be published in 2026. Lucy lives with her family on the edge of the Chiltern Hills.
Lyla June
Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organiser of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. She researches the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.
Lynnie Hutchison
Lynnie, an organic mixed farmer, started using homeopathy and a whole health approach over twenty-five years ago, as she wanted to do more for her livestock health than wait for disease to occur. Lynnie recently obtained funding from DEFRA’s FiPL fund to take a group of farmers through the WHAg Foundation Course in Preventative Farm Homeopathy. She is currently mentoring a group of homeopathic farmers and coordinating an Innovative Farmers Field Lab on fly strike.
Maddy Longhurst
Maddy has been co-leading the Urban Agriculture Consortium since 2020 and is now working on research into Agroecological Urbanism (AU) alongside Chiara Tornaghi. This Landed Community Kitchens project is the first in-depth, place-based development work into one of the eight Building Blocks of AU. Maddy is also helping to develop low-impact tiny house communities as a justice and care-centred approach to the housing crisis, and is part of We Are Avon, Bristol Living Soil and Bristol Commons.
Mallika Basu
Mallika is a writer, presenter and adviser who champions food as a force for good. Author of In Good Taste: What Shapes What We Eat and Drink – And Why It Matters (Jan 26), she publishes a Substack newsletter exploring the links between food, people and planet. A Good Food magazine contributor with 25 years in strategic advisory, she specialises in bold, spiced recipes and takes a deep interest in the future of food education and sustainability.
Mandy Biscoe
Mandy is Co-Director of Exeter Seed Bank, a community interest company which has been providing activities around the craft of seed-saving since 2021. Mandy is a socially engaged artist and community gardener. She specialises in delivering creative and environmental arts projects that include all sections of the community in a shared purpose towards nature connection and its stewardship. Her aim is to embed art into everyday life.
Margarita Bárcena Lujambio
Margarita is a Mexican political scientist and Development Strategist at A Growing Culture, working at the intersection of food sovereignty, storytelling, and systemic change. She explores food as a portal for kinship, care, and transformation. Currently, she’s working to start a permaculture and communal living project, where foodways, ancestral memory, and the wisdom of Gaia intertwine as key ingredients for reworlding: through the hands that feed and the stories that remember.
Marcus Macdonald
Marcus is a passionate South London-based grower, community organiser, tour manager and cultural advocate. He has extensive experience navigating the intersection of food sovereignty, racial justice, land justice, music, and community organising. Marcus brings a unique perspective as a working-class queer. Marcus is a core collective member of Land In Our Names and is one of the coordinators at their Dandelion growing project based at Glengall Wharf Gardens.
Margot Gibbs
Margot is a journalist with Lighthouse Reports, a non-profit investigative team leading global collaborations on public interest issues. She previously reported on corruption with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and led investigations for environmental and human rights NGOs.
Maria Jenkins
Maria is the Head Grower and a Director at Tolhurst Organic CIC, a long-established organic farm specialising in the production of fruit and vegetables without animal inputs of any kind. The farm uses ‘green manures’ and ramial woodchip to drive soil health and crop yields. She sees growing and eating good food as a foundation of ecological and climate resilience.
Mark Davis
Mark has forty years’ experience in agriculture and development across NGOs, government, and the UN. Trained in ecology and agricultural management, he specialises in sustainable practices and strategic planning. He led major FAO initiatives on pesticide risk reduction, climate strategy, and sustainability. At The Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, he supports global efforts to eliminate pesticide risks and promote sustainable agriculture.
Mark Horton
Mark is CEO of Ballinderry Rivers Trust in Northern Ireland and All-Ireland Director of The Rivers Trust, leading efforts to protect and restore freshwater ecosystems across the island of Ireland. With a background in environmental science and over two decades of experience in sustainable catchment management, he champions community-led conservation, use of nature-based solutions, and policy innovation through demonstrating best practice, to safeguard rivers for future generations.
Mark Measures
Mark is an independent organic agriculture consultant specialising in farm business management, soil management, husbandry and conversion planning. Working with the Organic Research Centre, he has over forty years’ experience of organic farming advice and research and is joint editor of the biannual Organic Farm Management Handbook. He is a partner in Cow Hall, a mixed farm in the Shropshire Hills and a trustee of Las Dos Hermanas, a farming and environmental charity in Argentina.
Mark Moodie
Mark has spent 35 years researching biodynamic farming and has published research on the Considera website. He now manages the Biodynamic Association.
Martin Kyte
Martin is an experienced crop specialist in both Organic and conventional crops, including protected cropping at Rijk Zwaan UK for 38 years, a global leader in vegetable breeding. With a strong background in horticulture and close to 50 years of experience in sustainable agriculture, Martin plays a pivotal role in developing and showcasing high-performing organic and conventional vegetable varieties tailored to UK growing conditions.
Martin Lines
Martin is CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. He farms arable crops in Cambridgeshire, focusing on soil health, integrated pest management, mixed rotations and schemes that pay for public goods. He works with government, retailers and the finance sector to back farmers with simple rules and fair funding. Martin convenes farmer networks, shares what works in practice, and acts as a constructive voice across the sector – aiming for resilient businesses, better food and more nature.
Martyn Windsor
Martyn is Co-Director of Exeter Seed Bank, a community interest company which has been providing activities around the craft of seed-saving since 2021. His work through curation and collaboration often involves socially engaged arts practice. He is interested in alternative systems for survival, through food, foraging, re-purposing and in particular, the natural world. He has held positions at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) and Spacex.
Matt Robson
Matt is a vineyard manager who manages several sites in Oxon, Bucks and Berks with several years of experience in viticulture. He’s been practising ‘regenVit’ since 2019 and organics since 2020, making massive improvements to the growing systems of the sites.
Matt Williams
Matt is a theologian and educator based in Whitehead, Co. Antrim, which he and his family call home. He is currently developing an organisation that pioneers farm-based education programmes for children and adults at Jubilee Farm, near Larne. Originally from Wales, he has also lived in England and Malawi. His core aim is to integrate the physical, environmental, social and spiritual aspects of human flourishing, particularly in response to various forms of disadvantage locally and globally.
Matthew Fisher
Matthew works at the One Health interface to investigate the factors driving emerging patterns of fungal infections and antifungal resistance across humans, wildlife and plants. His research focuses on developing genomic, epidemiological, and experimental models to better understand the drivers of fungal disease and to inform new methods of diagnosis, surveillance and control.
Matthew Slotover
Matthew is the founder of Toklas Restaurant and Bakery, London. Toklas was the first importer of Todoli Citrus from Valencia, a farm with over 500 varieties of citrus. Todoli now sells to around 150 restaurants via Shrub. In a previous life, Matthew was the co-founder of Frieze magazine and art fairs. He is chair of Turner contemporary in Margate and a trustee of Sadlers Wells and Murmur, an environmental charity.
Megan Perry
Megan supports the Sustainable Food Trust’s policy and campaign work, with a focus on local meat supply chains, including work with the Abattoir Sector Group and Defra’s Small Abattoir Working Group and Task and Finish Group. She is also passionate about sustainable fibre, supporting work to bring value back into wool.
Melanie Challenger
Melanie is a writer, researcher and broadcaster on environmental history and philosophy of science. She is Deputy Co-Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and a Vice President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals UK, and the author of How to Be Animal: What it Means to Be Human.
Members of the Justice is Not Seasonal Campaign
Justice is Not Seasonal is a collective of Latin American former farmworkers. The group is campaigning for redress in their case, for the granting of the right to work and study to asylum seekers and those in the Modern Slavery system, and for structural changes to the Seasonal Worker Scheme to ensure that the UK’s agricultural system is based on justice and fairness.
Merlin Hanbury-Tenison
Merlin is a Cornish conservationist and veteran who founded The Thousand Year Trust, Britain’s rainforest charity. Its mission is to triple Britain’s rainforest cover to one million acres within thirty years. His work has featured in National Geographic, the Guardian and on the BBC. Merlin lives in a Cornish rainforest with his wife Lizzie, an entrepreneur and business advisor, and their two daughters. His first book, Our Oaken Bones, was named a top 2025 read by Penguin and shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize.
Michael Antoniou
Michael is a Professor in Molecular Genetics in the Department of Medical & Molecular Genetics at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital (King’s College London). Historically, a molecular biologist, in 2013, Michael expanded his research into the area of molecular toxicology. His research measures outcomes from exposure to chemical pollutants, including effects on the gut microbiome. Since then, Prof Antoniou’s group has become a world leader in glyphosate herbicide toxicology.
Michael Leddy
Michael began his growing journey in 2021, taking a position at a long standing wholesale and box scheme in Tadcaster. After three seasons, he moved on to Mora Farm in Cornwall. Feeling unfulfilled with growing for wholesale he turned his eye towards community scale growing. He is now share farming with Jo Cartwright at Swillington Organic Farm, taking on the operation of her Community Supported Agriculture scheme as she plans her retirement.
Michal Nahman
Michal is Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of the West of England. She co-leads an MSc in Sustainable Food Systems, and works towards anti-racist and anti-colonial goals with various national and local food networks within Bristol. Part of the Land Stories Collective, Michal enjoys cooking foods from the SWANA region and building solidarity across cultural and social divides through food.
Mike Harrington
Entering the industry at the height of the chemical era, when the solution to crop production was mostly just chemical inputs, Mike took a keen interest in finding a better understanding to manage the growth and health of plants. He turned to the past for answers. Applying an agronomy style that respected the soil and nurtured the crops, Mike started to observe the effects of holistic management. The effects were so inspiring, he decided to wholeheartedly employ this concept.
Mike Mallett
Mike has been the manager of Maple Farm Kelsale, a 137 hectare mixed organic farm situated on the Suffolk Coast, for the past thirteen years. Home to the Maple Farm Organic eggs, the arable cropping provides wheat for flour and feed, and pulses for the farms unique home produced soya free hen feed.
Minni Jain
Minni, Director of the Flow Partnership, works globally on community-led river restoration and management of floods and droughts using simple, successful, low-cost, traditional methods. She also runs Water Schools for community sharing of successful water retention practices. Minni is also the co-author of The Language of Water and The Water of Consciousness/Living Waters: Pulse of the Planet.
Molly Easton
Molly is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Youngwilders, a youth-led non-profit driving UK nature recovery and centring young people in the process and movement. She has a background in environmental policy and strategy, including as Senior Adviser at Natural England, where she worked on Local Nature Recovery Strategies and led on a new landscape-scale nature recovery project, and as Sustainability Consultant at Art Partner.
Mitchel Green
Mitch is a Stockman, experienced in holistic planned grazing and regenerative cattle genetics. He is also the founder and facilitator of Emergent Generation’s Speakers’ Corner, aimed at helping members catch-up, share their passion and practice public speaking. Previously, Mitch studied BSc Zoology and MSc Sustainable Food Systems and is passionate about facilitating communication, connection and dialogue to drive local food system transformation.
Monica Feria-Tinta
Monica is a barrister specialising in public international law, including climate and environmental law. She is the author of A Barrister for the Earth, a leading book on Rights of Nature. Monica has acted in the Los Cedros case, a world landmark in the rights of nature, and her work in climate change litigation secured the first international win holding a State responsible for climate action paving the way for climate accountability worldwide.
Monica Gagliano
Monica is an award-winning ecologist who pioneered the research field of plant bioacoustics, which, for the first time, experimentally demonstrates that plants emit voices and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. She is the author of Thus Spoke the Plant and The Mind of Plants.
Monika Zurek
Monika is Associate Professor and Leader of the Food System Transformation Group at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. For over twenty-five years she has worked on food systems change, environment and development interactions in research and international organisations as well as in the consulting and the philanthropic sector.
Muna Reyal
Muna is Executive Editor at Chelsea Green, a publisher of books on the practice and politics of sustainable living, from food to farming, health and wellbeing, gardening, nature, the environment and wildlife as well as human culture, society and economy.
Myrtle Gregory
Myrtle is Research & Policy Officer at Eating Better, an alliance of NGOs working on healthy and sustainable diets. She leads work on industrial livestock production, focusing on the role of retailers in enabling ‘less and better’ meat and dairy. Raised on an organic beef farm in Cornwall and with a Master’s in Food Security, she brings both policy and field perspective. She previously worked on the Duchy of Cornwall’s Natural Capital Project and is a passionate gardener and vegetable grower.
Nadia Shaikh
Nadia is a naturalist, ornithologist, writer, podcaster and co-director of the Right to Roam campaign. She is also founder of the Raven Network, a group for people of colour working with nature, and works to decolonise the way we think about conservation. She is a columnist for TGO magazine and co-host of the nature podcast Into The Wild. She has previously worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. She lives on the Isle of Bute, where she has the right to roam.
Natasha Boyland
Natasha is a Research Officer at the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience (LSE), exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly impacting the lives of nonhuman animals – a topic often overlooked in discussions of ethical AI use and governance. She holds a PhD and MSc in Animal Behaviour, with prior research on animal social networks, and brings a decade of NGO experience in farmed animal advocacy, with a focus on aquaculture.
Natasha Hurley
Natasha is Deputy Director of Foodrise, a charity transforming the food system for climate, nature and justice. She has devoted the past two decades to exposing irresponsible practices in corporate supply chains and spent several years advocating for policies to tackle climate change and ozone depletion. Based in London, she was previously in Brussels where she worked for the European Commission and in public affairs and strategic communications. She is a trustee for Somerset Wildlands.
Nathaniel Hughes
Nathaniel is a herbalist who runs the School of Intuitive Herbalism from a beautiful Apothecary at Ruskin Mill near Stroud. His passion is in opening people’s awareness to plant wisdom and witnessing the catalytic healing that unfolds from these human-plant relationships.
Nell Whittaker
Nell is a writer and editor of TANK Magazine. She is responsible for spearheading the overall editorial strategy, commissioning contributors and working with the commercial team to develop innovative collaborations.
Nic Lampkin
Nic is an organic farming policy consultant and researcher at Thünen Institute in Germany, working on organic farming policy, including the EU Organic Target of 25% by 2030. He has been involved in organic farming research since the 1980s, covering technical, environmental, economic and policy issues. He was Director of Organic Centre Wales and the Organic Research Centre in England, and has published widely, including Organic Farming and the Organic Farm Management Handbook as joint editor.
Nick Evans
Nick is the co-founder of Fantasy Fibre Mill, where he works on farm-scale textile processing machinery. He is also a sewer, gardener and natural dye enthusiast. In general, always looking for ways to reclaim the means of production.
Nick Mole
Nick joined Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) in March 2007. Over the last nearly two decades, Nick has worked across all areas of pesticide policy from agriculture to home and garden use. Nick’s work has included strengthening EU pesticide regulation, developing the PAN UK Pesticide-Free Towns campaign, analysing data on pesticide residues in UK food and shaping the UK National Action Plan on Pesticides.
Nick Saltmarsh
Nick has worked in food and farming for almost 30 years, previously in the voluntary sector and serving as a board member of organisations including East Anglia Food Link and Growing Communities. In 2012, he co-founded Hodmedod, a business working to increase diversity on farms and in the food we eat, for the benefit of farming and farmed landscapes, the environment, individual health and our food culture. Nick is the managing director of Hodmedod, which now works with over 30 different arable crops from a network of British farmers, to produce a diverse range of over 100 plant-based wholefoods.
Nicola Chester
Nicola is the author of Ghosts of the Farm, Two Women’s Journeys Through Land, Time and Community, and the award winning On Gallows Down, Place, Protest and Belonging. She writes on rural issues and nature and is a columnist for The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, BBC Countryfile Magazine and a Guardian Country Diarist. Her work also appears in anthologies such as Wild Service, Why Nature Needs You and The Book of Bogs. She is also an imperfect activist for community and nature.
Nicola Scott
Nicola co-leads the Pathways to Land for BPOC work. Previously, her PhD critique of the development of Genetically Modified crops in Mexico led her to set up food growing spaces in disinvested areas of Manchester. As an urban farmer she co-wrote a book about diversifying, decolonising, and democratising economic systems. Both led her to begin the Pathways to Land work, stirred by land activists and landworkers of colour in England. She’s part of the Food & Racial Justice Working Group organised by Eating Better & Sustain.
Nicola Wilks
Nicola is Co-Director and Co-Founder of Adfree Cities, working for happier, healthier cities free from corporate advertising. Nicola is interested in how advertising normalises and drives demand for industrial animal farming. She wrote Adfree Cities’ guide, The Cows Aren’t Laughing: Decoding the Deceit of Meat, Egg and Dairy Advertising, and works with organisations across animal rights, climate, farming and food on how we can end this harmful advertising to support a fairer food system.
Nicole Pita
Nicole is a Program Manager at IPES-Food, overseeing research on climate and global governance. A multilingual food systems scientist, she brings a particular focus on the sociology of food and eating.
Nigel Akehurst
Nigel is a third-generation livestock farmer, agricultural journalist and co-facilitator of the Pevensey Farmers Cluster Group in East Sussex. He runs Indie Farmer, an online magazine sharing stories of regenerative farming and rural life, and writes for outlets including South East Farmer. Through his work, Nigel connects food, farming and nature, supporting collaboration and storytelling across the British countryside.
Nikki Trott
Nikki is designing regenerative capital for food systems transformation as founding partner of Rooted. She is the author of Sacred Business, a manifesto bridging inner transformation with exceptional businesses that flourishes with life. She’s host of the top 2% global podcast Going Conscious, and a sought-after brand strategist, CEO adviser and international speaker.
Nikki Yoxall
Nikki is a first-generation farmer and researcher based in north-east Scotland, co-managing an organic upland suckler herd, and is Technical Director at Pasture for Life. Nikki’s recent PhD explored how nature connection shapes farming systems, and as a 2026 Nuffield Scholar, she is investigating global examples of climate adaptation in livestock systems to support resilient, ethical and context-specific farming in the UK.
Nina Pullman
Nina is a food journalist and radio producer specialising in food systems, farming and supply chains. Previously, she set up and edited Wicked Leeks magazine, published by Riverford, and now works freelance as a producer on Radio 4’s The Food Programme and as a features editor for trade magazine Fresh Produce Journal. She grew up in the Peak District and is now based there.
Ninian Stuart
Ninian lives and works on the north-facing side of Falkland hill, in Fife, Scotland. Having inherited an old estate of the Royal Stuarts, Ninian has been on a journey of learning and discovery about how to share stewardship of the land. He is currently working with others to design and develop new forms of governance, economy and stories that will serve future generations of land stewards.
Nir Halfon
Nir believes in looking at sustainability from a wider perspective encompassing all of life necessities; Physical – shelter, energy, food and waste, and emotional- the needs of each individual and community spirit. His mission is to be able to share the knowledge and tools I have with others through work and education. He has worked extensively both in consultancy and in education.
Oli Rodker
Oli works as an Advocacy Manager and sits on the Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC) Board of Directors. He is a co-founder of the ELC, which has been setting up small farms for new entrants for fifteen years. He is also a co-founder of the Landworkers’ Alliance, where he continues to sit on the Co-ordinating Group. He has thirty years experience of working on environmental and land management issues and with co-operative and community models.
Oliver Hattingh
Oliver is a second-year SoCoBio PhD researcher studying the links between soil ecoacoustics, soil structure, and biodiversity. He is testing the validity of sound-based monitoring as a practical, non-destructive tool for farmers and land managers, using both controlled lab work and field experiments.
Oliver Moore
Oliver lectures in the Centre for Co-operative Studies in University College Cork, and is a member of Talamh Beo – Ireland’s La Via Campesina member. He volunteers with Cloughjordan Community Farm, an agroecological Community Supported Agriculture scheme based in Cloughjordan ecovillage, where he also lives. Oliver is on the Steering Committee of Ireland’s eNGO platform the Environmental Pillar, and is a founder of the Feeding Ourselves Community of Practice in Ireland, which acts on food system transformation.
Ollie Douglas
Farmer’s son Ollie is Curator of the Museum of English Rural Life (The MERL) at the University of Reading. He co-hosts The MERL’s Absolute Units podcast and works to connect communities, researchers, and audiences with collections linked to farming and the countryside. Through partnerships and projects, he aims to use heritage to explore, explain, and respond to shared global challenges connected to food, land, and heritage. He also writes the occasional poem.
Óscar Olivares-Fuster
Óscar is Technical Director at Todolí Citrus Fundació. He is trained in Biological Sciences and holds a PhD in Citrus Biotechnology, with a postdoctoral stay at the University of Florida. After years of research at the IVIA (Valencia), he went to Auburn University to develop fish vaccines and achieve a Master’s in Aquaculture. In 2010 he returned to Spain to join the Agriculture Service of his hometown. Since 2019, he combines his public service with his work at the Foundation.
Out on the Land (OOTL)
OOTL is where LGBTQIA+ folx come together to build solidarity, network and connect, and raise the voices of queer and trans landworkers. They are the LGBTQIA+ member organising group within the Landworkers Alliance. Collectively, they aim to reduce isolation, challenge cis-het-normativity and create spaces for queer and trans joy! They are an unabashedly queer and trans positive group, led by queer and trans people, and celebrate all the beautiful ways we can be Out On The Land!
Paddy Deady
Paddy is a Lake District Farmer and is part of the Upper Duddon Landscape Recovery Project.
Pania Newton
Pania (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Te Ahiwaru, Ngāti Mahuta) is a lawyer, activist and kaitiaki of Ihumātao in Auckland, Aotearoa. Her work bridges Indigenous rights, land stewardship and regenerative futures — centring Maaori values of whenua care, food sovereignty and community well-being. A co-founder of the #ProtectIhumatao protection movement, she advocates for governance models that honour ancestral knowledge, climate resilience and intergenerational justice.
Pamela Shor
Pamela is the Head Grower at Black Rootz and founder of Mycelium Minds and The Seed Protectors. She is a horticulturist, community advocate and urban grower dedicated to building sustainable communities through innovative practices in agroecology, mycology, and permaculture.
Navaratnam Partheeban
Navaratnam is Regional Head of Farm at IVC Evidensia and has worked in a variety of roles, including farm animal veterinary clinical practice, academia and industry. He is co-founder of the British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society, a Governor of Harper Adams University, Board Member of the British Cattle Veterinary Association, working group member of the Future Food Movement and Ambassador for the Country Trust.
Pat Aherne
Pat is a conventional dairy farmer who takes an unconventional approach to the health of his ninety cows. A severe mastitis outbreak fifteen years ago pushed him to explore alternatives to antibiotics. Since then, Pat has embraced homeopathy, transforming his herd’s fertility and resilience while improving soil and crop health. His journey proves that it’s possible to reduce reliance on antibiotics and chemicals without compromising productivity – in fact, quite the opposite.
Pat Thomas
Pat is an award-winning campaigner, journalist and author. Currently director of Beyond GM/A Bigger Conversation, she is also a former editor of Ecologist and has run campaigns for Paul McCartney’s Meat-Free Monday and Compassion in World Farming. She has written more than 40 books, was inducted into Who’s Who in 2014 and was Slow Food Person of the year 2024. She’s been a trustee of the Soil Association and Organic Research Centre.
Patrick Holden
Patrick is the Founder and CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust. He trained in Biodynamic farming and has farmed for over 50 years on a 300-acre mixed organic dairy holding, now the longest established organic dairy farm in Wales. He plays a leading role in several Hubs within the Sustainable Markets Initiative, including Agriculture and Valuing Sustainability.
Patrick MacManaway
Patrick, a ‘land whisperer’, has worked for the last 25 years with farmers, gardeners and land stewards, helping them to apply techniques of working with subtle energy on their farms and lands, in order to keep them healthy.
Paul Powlesland
Paul is a barrister and founder of Lawyers for Nature, which aims to transform the relationship between law, lawyers and the natural world. He acts to protect trees and rivers in the courts, campaigns for the Rights of Nature and represents Nature in the Parliament of Owls advisory board for Right To Roam. He lives on a boat on the River Roding in East London, and set up the River Roding Trust to protect and restore the river.
Peni Ediker
Peni cultivates a thriving Market Garden and orchard from her One Planet Development smallholding in Carmarthenshire. Her success is rooted in a deep understanding of soil microbiology and her innovative use of biochar, inoculated compost, and biofertilisers. She has trialled these methods on a larger farm scale with excellent results. A passionate educator, she teaches courses in permaculture, sustainable horticulture, and biofertliser production, inspiring many to grow in harmony with nature.
Pete Thompson
Pete is founder of Nature Based Farming. He is a farmer, olive grower and lead of the Tendring Farm Cluster. Nature Based Farming delivers natural capital services such as woodland carbon and biodiversity and produces nuts, fruit, olives and meat from it’s farms in Essex and Suffolk.
Peter Lundgren
Peter is a Lincolnshire farmer growing mainly conventional arable crops, and also a campaigner for sustainable and financially viable farming. In 2018, Friends of the Earth commissioned Peter to research and write their report Pesticide Reduction and the Promotion of IPM: A Farmer’s Perspective.
Peter Hall
Peter is a forth generation farmer, and current owner of HE Hall & Son Ltd – a 175 hectare holding. Ninety hectares are low input combinable crops, five hectares host grapes, grown for sparkling wine production, with the remainder comprising of apples, pears, plums. Almost 50% is farmed organically and the entire farm is managed under Higher and Mid-Tier Countryside Stewardship schemes, where the emphasis is on producing high quality food in a manner that enhances every aspect of the natural world.
Peter Weeden
Peter grew up in Kent, working in hospitality from potwash to waiter to cook. A humanities degree briefly interrupted his path before he returned to college to train as a Chef. He has spent twenty-five years cooking in London at the Paternoster Chophouse, Newman Street Tavern and for the last nine years as Head Chef at The Duke of Cambridge, the original Organic pub, and is Chef Director for the Culpeper Family Hospitality Group. He promotes shorter supply chains, sustainable seafood, and enjoys sharing delicious food.
Petra Mansour
Petra is a poet, cultural producer and activist. With close family ties to Palestine, she writes, speaks and organises for solidarity in numerous arenas. Petra is a part of the Land Stories Collective.
Phil Gordon-Jones
Phil is the Farm and Property Manager at Fir Farm, an 1,100 acre Organic, Regenerative, Pasture for Live-certified farm in the Cotswolds. He manages all aspects of the Fir Farm business ranging from direct selling milk and meat to consumers via vending machines, overseeing their on-site moveable abattoir to managing lettings on both their residential and commercial properties. Phil has over fifteen years experience of running organic livestock businesses to a high standard, specialising in high-end beef production.
Phil Holtam
In 2020, with five years’ experience in organic horticulture, Phil co-founded Sussex Surplus CIC, an independent social enterprise dedicated to creating social value from surplus food. Their work includes gleaning days, community meals, long-life products, and event catering services. Sussex Surplus works closely with a network of fruit and vegetable growers to redirect unsellable produce to the community food sector.
Phoebe Cooke
Phoebe is co-deputy editor at climate investigations website DeSmog. She has reported and edited across the climate beat, exposing vested interests in everything from heat pump misinformation and biomass subsidies, to farm lobbies and fertiliser companies. Phoebe’s work has been covered by Politico, The Guardian, and the Financial Times.
Rachel Fleming
Rachel is the co-founder and director of the Animate Earth Collective. She is an ecologist, scientist and policy-maker, and having once worked at a senior level in environmental protection, she now provides animist education and resources for changing the way we see ourselves in relationship with the natural world.
Rachel Jones
Rachel is a strategist who leads Sustain’s work on Local Food. She coordinated the development of the Local Food Growth Plan – a collaborative plan to scale the local food sector up and out, which had input from 500+ local food system actors. She has a background in sustainability communications and worked for ten years at sustainable development agency Futerra. Rachel is also a trained horticultural grower and was Head Grower at Sitopia Farm in the London Borough of Greenwich.
Rachel Phillips
Rachel is the Managing Director of the Apricot Centre, based at Huxhams Cross Farm in Devon, a Regenerative Biodynamic Farm. She co-created the centre’s accredited, trailblazing courses for training new entrant farmers and farmers transitioning to regenerative and agroecological farming systems. Rachel is also a design consultant, specialising in developing education systems for farms, helping integrate practical training with sustainable farm operations.
Rachel Solnick
Rachel is a PhD candidate investigating diaspora identity and Black agrarianism as an abolitionist praxis. Her research examines the radical resistance and Black-placemaking of farmers in Detroit, and land practices which imagine and enact totally alternative futures.
Rae Hippolyte
Rae is a food grower, educator and multidisciplinary artist from London. Former Co-Director of Folx Farm and project lead for the Food Access Fund (F.A.F), Rae works with young people and is passionate about food as a vehicle for change and community building.
Randa Toko
Randa is a researcher whose practice sits at the confluence of agroecology, social arts and pedagogy. Through gestures of cooking, sharing, gathering and foraging, she invites reflection on food as a practice of inquiry and the tongue an arena for encountering social and ecological relations. She is the Southern Coordinator for the Seed Sovererignty Programme and has growed for the Seed Saving Network and Wolves Lane Centre, connecting with international seed saving initiatives.
Rebecca Laughton
Rebecca has been combining practical work as an organic grower and farmer with research and campaigning for over twenty years. She is the Horticulture Campaigns Co-ordinator at Landworkers’ Alliance, and facilitated the Defra Horticulture ELMS Test and Trial, Growing the Goods. She is author of Surviving and Thriving on the Land.
Rebecca Mayhew
Rebecca farms with her family in Norfolk, where they’re converting the once intensively farmed 500 acres into an oasis. Enterprises include a Jersey dairy keeping calves at foot, beef herd, sheep, pigs, laying hens, and a farm shop, cafe, and butchery. Holistic Management training has provided an invaluable framework for healing the farm, running a diverse business, whilst engaging with other farmers, the public and local schools about climate change, farming practices and nutrient dense food.
Rebecca Tobi
Rebecca is Head of Food Business Transformation at the Food Foundation, with oversight of the charity’s work engaging food businesses, investors and policy-makers with the need to transition the UK towards a more transparent, sustainable and healthy food system. Rebecca is a Registered Nutritionist (RNutr) with a background in science communication.
Regina Murphy Keith
Regina is a nurse midwife with over forty years’ experience in health systems and nutrition. She is associate professor at the University of Westminster, a current member of the UK Right to Food Commission and has worked in over 50 countries promoting the Right to Health and Nutrition through equity, voice, governance, and leadership through an intersectoral lens. She works to ensure that voices of communities and marginalised groups feed into UK and global policy and practice.
Ria Burns
Ria (they/them) is a knitwear designer-maker, natural dyer and dye plant grower based in North Somerset. They specialise in working with local, regenerative wool and homegrown natural dyes. Alongside their creative practice, they facilitate workshops in natural dyes and dye plant growing. They are the author of Dyeing Yarn Naturally, published in 2023. Ria also works with private clients and research organisations, providing natural dyeing consultancy, dyeing and design services.
Richard Choksey
Richard is studying for a PhD in the history of Early Modern botanical collections at the Natural History Museum. He is researching the provenance of 18th Century botanical specimens, locating them in space and time, as well as within networks of commerce, colonialism and agricultural expansion. Richard has worked variously as a botanical horticulturist, community food grower and nature engagement practitioner, primarily in London.
Rob Percival
Rob is Head of Food Policy at the Soil Association, leading the charity’s campaigns on industrial livestock, ultra-processed foods, and dietary change. He is also the author of The Meat Paradox, a book about the cultural complexity of meat.
Robbie Blake
Robbie is an environmentalist and communications specialist who grew up on an organic farm in Somerset. Based in Brussels since 2010, he has worked with Friends of the Earth Europe to win EU rules on unsustainable biofuels, safeguard EU nature laws, and secure major media coverage on climate issues and fossil fuels. He currently leads communications for the sustainable food think tank IPES-Food.
Robin Snowdon
Robin is co-owner, manager, and winemaker for Limeburn Hill Vineyard near Bristol. Planted in 2015, the Demeter certified vineyard grows eight different varieties of vine and produces only 100% natural, biodynamic wines. He teaches the Introduction to Biodynamic Viticulture course for the Biodynamic Agricultural College, runs regular workshops on Biodynamic Winegrowing at the vineyard and is a past chair of the UK Biodynamic Association (BDA) Certification Board.
Rod Calder-Potts
Rod is a fifth-generation farmer who, with his wife Julie, owns and operates Highbank Orchards in Kilkenny, Ireland. Since 1994, Rod has been committed to sustainable, natural agriculture spearheading the farm’s organic transformation. Under Rod’s leadership, Highbank has become renowned for its award-winning apple products and the ‘Taste & Tour’ orchard experience, which invites visitors to learn about natural agriculture, explore the orchards, and sample Highbank’s unique range of products.
Roisin Taylor
Roisin is a nature-friendly cut flower producer running Verde Flower Co. and co-Director of UK Youth for Nature – the UK’s largest youth network calling on the government to take action on nature loss. She is also a trustee for the Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust and a Nature Friendly Farming Network champion focusing on horticulture and cut flower production.
Ronja Schlumberger
Ronja co-runs Vital Seeds, a small organic seed company in South Devon, with her business partner Fred Groom. Founded in 2018, they rent about an acre of land and some office space producing and selling over 200 varieties of organic, open-pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds to gardeners and small-scale growers. Seeds are grown on-site, by a network of regional growers, or sourced from trusted partners. Vital Seeds also offers educational workshops and an online seed saving course.
Rosie Bristow
Rosie is a seamstress, farmer and flax enthusiast who is currently doing a PhD in Engineering and Textiles at Heriot-Watt Uni. She is the co-founder of Fantasy Fibre Mill, who are designing open-source farm scale textiles processing machines.
Rosie Bryson
Rosie is a plant pathologist and Research Director for ADAS Sustainable Agricultural Systems with 35 years’ experience. Her role is focused on developing translational agricultural research. For 10 years she was based in Germany with BASF as Head of Technical Project Management Europe where she coordinated technical dossier submissions for the BASF European crop protection portfolio. She was also a member of the CLE Efficacy Expert Group and was awarded Expert Status for her work on Fungicide Resistance.
Rosinah Mbenya
Rosinah is the Country Coordinator at PELUM Kenya, a network of sixty nine organisations promoting agroecology among smallholder farmers. She serves on several global and African agroecology boards and initiatives. An environmentalist by training, she advocates for climate-sensitive agriculture, farmer rights, and the empowerment of women and youth. A practicing small-scale farmer, she is passionate about transforming rural livelihoods through sustainable farming practices.
Rowan Phillimore
Rowan is Co-Director at The Gaia Foundation. She accompanies the regionally-based Seed Sovereignty Programme team who are restoring seed diversity nationally through trainings and regional networks, and the We Feed The UK storytelling initiative, pairing photography, poetry and agroecology. The Gaia Seed Sovereignty team will be running the ORFC26 Seed Swap. Rowan recently co-authored the book We Feed The UK, published in July 2025 and available for sale in the ORFC bookshop.
Ruchi Tripathi
Ruchi is currently Director Climate and Nature with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food working with members and partners to support transition to an equitable and resilient food system. This includes engagement in global fora, deepening strategic partnerships, organising convenings, generating insights and organising collective action related to the climate-nature-food nexus. Ruchi has 25 years’ experience in international development, right to food, gender, climate and trade justice.
Rupa Marya
Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, writer, and composer. She founded the Deep Medicine Circle to advance the concept of Whole System Health. She is based at Trinity College Dublin as Adjunct Professor of Land, Food and Medicine and Research Fellow at the School of Botany, where she brings the Farming is Medicine program to Ireland. Her work sits at the nexus of climate, health and social justice. With Raj Patel, she wrote the book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.
Ruth Ashton-Shaw
Ruth is an organic and regenerative farmer in Dumfries and Galloway and Vice Chair of Nature Friendly Farming Network Scotland. A new entrant, she runs Low Auldgirth, a 30-acre farm with additional grazing, producing high-quality meat, eggs and wool from native breeds. Ruth champions small producers, sustainable food systems and nature-friendly farming. A regular media contributor, she is passionate about sparking conversations that challenge norms and highlighting farming’s role in delivering positive change.
Ruth Hancock
Ruth is an agroecological vegetable farmer from Devon, UK. Her farming operation and the community surrounding it have been twinned via the Landworkers’ Alliance solidarity project with al Mughayyir vegetable co operative in the West Bank since October 2024. They are in regular communication with the farming co operative and also hold a variety of fund and awareness raising events to be of greater support.
Ruth Munns
Ruth has long been committed to low impact development and land-based living. After studying International Relations at The London School of Economics, she shifted focus to grassroots, local solutions and the role of planning in environmental and social justice. With an MSc in Urban Planning from the University of the West of England, she has four years’ experience across private and third sectors. At the Ecological Land Cooprative, she leads planning applications and campaigns for policies supporting sustainable rural development.
Ruth Ogier
Ruth coordinates War on Want’s International Programmes, which supports the work and struggles of trade unions, farmers’ movements and grassroots social movements across the world for food sovereignty, labour rights, economic justice and a just recovery from the climate crisis that ensures a dignified life for all.
Ruth Westcott
Ruth is the climate and nature emergency lead at Sustain. Their work includes stopping the spread of polluting factory farms, promoting healthy and sustainable public sector meals, exploring rewilding and just transitions, reducing food’s climate impact through advertising, and empowering the next generation of farming advocates.
Rye Hickman
Rye is a PhD researcher at the University of Greenwich and Rothamsted Research with the UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training. Their research explores the politics of soil and how different ways of knowing shape human–soil relations. Through the arts and participatory research, Rye works to cultivate more reciprocal relationships with soil and is a co-founder of Resonating Fields, an arts-research collective experimenting with sound and participatory practices.
Sabrina Espeleta
Sabrina is Senior Programmes Officer at War on Want, partnering with peasant movements and civil society organisations from the Global South in the struggle for food sovereignty. Previously, she coordinated agroecology and family farming projects in Argentina, Brazil and Sri Lanka, collaborating with local and national organisations advocating for smallholders’ rights.
Sagaravajra
Sagaravajra is the creator of Hridayabija, a forest garden in East Devon, UK, which he has developed as a small ‘Pure Land’ in a field. This eco-dharma site hosts environmentally themed retreats and is associated with the Triratna Buddhist Community.
Sahra Hersi
Sahra is an artist and spatial designer whose work explores care, community, and belonging in the public realm. Drawing on her background in architecture and design, she creates collaborative projects, installations, and workshops with local groups across east London and beyond. She also lectures in Design at Goldsmiths University.
Sally Azzam
Sally is a Palestinian social activist, born in Nazareth. She experienced first hand the challenges of inequality, inspiring her work with Palestinian communities under threat, advocating for equality alongside women’s and human rights groups. Sally co-founded Liwan, a cultural café in Nazareth’s historic market, which pioneered a model of Palestinian cultural resistance by revitalising the market after years of deliberate neglect. She is part of the Land Stories Collective.
Sam Best
Harry is the co-founder of Shrub, a wholesaler working directly with over 60 UK farms and market gardens. Supplying some of the UK’s best restaurants, Shrub is built on the principles of seasonality, transparency, quality and traceability – commodities often in short supply in the food industry, but in high demand in professional kitchens. Shrub champions integrity and calls for a food culture revolution that brings us closer to what we eat, and more passionate about how it gets onto our plates.
Sam Lee
Sam is a folksinger, song collector, activist, conservationist, guide, and presenter with four critically acclaimed albums. His debut received a Mercury Music Prize nomination. The latest, Songdreaming is a suite of love songs from and for the land. He is creator of the sell-out Singing With Nightingales series and author of The Nightingale, published in 2021. His practice explores a deep, sensitive connection to nature through song, storytelling, pilgrimage, and nature guiding.
Sam Packer
Sam works in standards development projects at Soil Association across food and farming including aquaculture, poultry and packaging. He is the coordinator of a farmer led research trial on dual purpose poultry. He has a background as a small-scale grower and community organiser and has worked in food policy and environmental projects across charity, civil service and CICs. Sam is based in Bristol and supports local food producers as a board member of the Bristol Food Producers’ Network.
Sam Sivapragasam
Sam is a Black and mixed writer, grower and organiser. They are a founding member of Land In Our Names, having led on ‘BPOC Growers Grants’, ‘Cultivating Justice’, ‘Anne:Seed’, ‘Fallow’ and ‘Dandelion’. They are a Tin House Summer Workshop Fellow 2025 and their work is under consideration for the Cordelia Feldman Prize for Life Writing and the Sophie Warne Fellowship. In both their organising and writing, Sam is passionate about exploring intersections and dreaming into reality the world we want to see.
Sandra Salazar
Sandra is a horticulturist and farmer and founder of GoGrowWithLove C.I.C, an indigenous melanin rich women-led organisation. Sandra teaches food growing and land/food sovereignty to children and families in nurseries, schools, and community projects and is the facilitator of a project called Women Leading With The Land, which focuses on empowering Women of African and Caribbean heritage to become SOILSISTARS and develop skills in land cultivation, food production and enterprise.
Sarah Bool
Sarah is the Conservative MP for South Northamptonshire and has been a member of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee since October 2024. Representing a constituency that is 88% agricultural land, farming and food security have been at the heart of Sarah’s parliamentary activity. She is passionate about the need for more joined up thinking with regards to land use and providing farmers with an ability to plan for the long term.
Sarah Calcutt
Initially training to be a buyer, Sarah has grown and marketed crops, led funding applications, and worked on regional and national strategy. Now CEO of leading London Food Redistribution Charity, City Harvest, Sarah is also a Non-Exec Director of The Covent Garden Market Authority and the vice-chair of the Rural Policy group, a rural and food sector debating forum hosting numerous online and in person debates about the policy and economic needs of the UK’s rural business community.
Sarah Davenport
Sarah is a post-graduate researcher with the UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training, researching risk and resilience in UK food supply chains. Sarah also works with The A Team Foundation supporting ecologically, economically and socially conscious food and land projects.
Sarah Dyke
Sarah is the Liberal Democrat MP for Glastonbury and Somerton and has been a member of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee since October 2024. She currently undertakes the role of Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Rural Affairs.
Sarah Fontaine
Sarah is a Wildlife Tracker, Interspecies Communicator, and Nature Connection Facilitator who weaves neuroscience, somatics, and energy awareness into practices that deepen connection with self and nature. With over 25 years of experience, she offers wildlife tracking courses and teaches nature-based healing.
Sarah Gowanlock
Sarah is a Partnerships Manager for Food for Life Scotland at Soil Association Scotland. Sarah grows supportive partnerships and initiatives for food systems change within Scotland’s public sector, working with caterers, senior leaders, third sector organisations, and academia to embed the Food for Life approach. She worked with partners to develop the ‘Give Peas a Chance!’ pilot project, which built a new supply chain for local,
Sarah Johnson
Sarah has a background in conservation science and particular interest in sustainable land management. She leads LWT’s award winning work to improve and restore the peat landscape, and to explore innovative land management practices on agricultural peat soils. Active also in policy and strategy in these areas, Sarah has sat on Defra’s Lowland Peatland Taskforce NW sub-group, and is a lead author of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s Commission of Inquiry report on Productive Lowland Peatland.
Sarah Woolley
Sarah is the General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU), one of the oldest trade unions in the UK, representing workers throughout the food industry and allied trades.
Sareta Puri
Sareta is the Diversity Outreach Coordinator at Sustain, where she works to embed anti-racism and equity across the food and farming sector. Sareta co-leads the racial justice working group, is part of the Culture Roots Collective team and works on career access initiatives to build a more ethnically diverse movement. She also works as a vegan chef, educator, writer and organiser across community food and advocacy.
Satish Kumar
Satish is the Founder of Schumacher College. He was Editor of Resurgence magazine for 40 years. A former Jain monk, Satish went on an international pilgrimage for peace walking 8000 miles from New Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington. Satish is a lifelong activist in the cause of environmental sustainability, social justice and world peace. He is the recipient of Goi Peace Prize 2022.
Sean Ruffell
Sean is the managing director of Manchester-based wholesalers, Organic North, who are one of the largest purveyors of organic produce in the UK. Organic North is committed to making organics as accessible to as many people as possible. Concurrent to this work, Sean is also an ambassador of Farming the Future, The Soil Association and a member of The Manchester Food Board, who offer strategic leadership on how food can be used to bring about positive, meaningful and lasting change in Manchester.
Sean Wensley
Sean works on animal welfare research, policy and advocacy, with over a decade of experience in the charity sector. He was President of the British Veterinary Association and chaired the Animal Welfare Working Group of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and an Honorary Lecturer in Animal Welfare at Queen’s University Belfast. His book Through A Vet’s Eyes was one of the Financial Times’ Best Summer Books of 2022.
Shanley Mitchell
Shanley is a creative strategist with over a decade of experience in design, storytelling, and environmental advocacy. She works across communications, branding, and campaigns to support organizations protecting our planet and its people. With a background in both environmental policy and visual design, she brings a multidisciplinary approach to shaping narratives that inspire connection, action, and lasting impact.
Sheila Dillon
Sheila has been a food journalist for more than four decades, beginning work as an editor and writer at the New York based magazine, Food Monitor. For 20 years she has worked on The Food Programme, first as reporter, then producer and now presenter. Her investigative work has won many awards including the Glaxo Science Prize, Caroline Walker award and several Glenfiddich Awards. She is also the creator of Radio 4’s first interactive grocery show, Veg Talk.
Shinya Imahashi
Shinya is a Natural Agriculture farmer and advocate. He was previously the long-term farm manager for the Shumei Yatesbury farm in the UK. Shinya offers educational courses to gardeners and farmers wishing to learn more about seed-saving and cultivating crops and healthy soil without the use of any additives. He also reaches a large global audience on YouTube. Now based in Japan, he continues advancing sustainable agriculture internationally.
Simon Charter
With an Applied Physics degree, Simon joined expeditions to northern Norway, Africa and India. Foregoing a PhD in semiconductor physics, he worked on biodynamic farms and built some of the UK’s first reedbed wastewater systems. He now develops his own Flowform designs and teaches on projective and path curve geometry. He and his family live on an old mill site, tending a clear flowing river, two acres of garden, a small hydroelectric turbine and water driven heat pump and a family of dippers.
Simon Crichton
Simon, with over 25 years in banking after starting as a farm consultant, joined Triodos Bank in 2009. He leads the Nature, Food and Resource team and serves as deputy director of Business Banking. His team specialises in financing land-based, nature-focused projects and supports sustainable practices. Simon collaborates with various organisations to promote sustainability and positive choices in business.
Sinéad Fenton
Sinéad is a grower, speaker, and systems thinker working in agriculture, ecology, and social change. She is the founder of Aweside Farm in East Sussex, a regenerative organic edible flower farm dedicated to biodiversity restoration. With a background in applied geology, software development, and food systems advocacy, Sinéad brings a multidisciplinary lens in environmental leadership and community food education, focused on land stewardship, climate resilience, and community-rooted enterprise.
SJ Hunt
SJ is the Chief Executive of The Country Food Trust, a national food poverty charity that focuses on wild meat provision to those in need. She began her career as an investment banker, crossing over into the charity sector 20 years ago. She is a Goldman Sachs 10,000 SB alumna and a 2020 Inspirational Woman in Social Enterprise (WISE) recipient. A former national award winner for product innovation, she has also expanded the charity’s offering to include international humanitarian aid.
Solidarity Across Land Trades (SALT)
SALT is a grassroots trade union of workers across all land related trades, organising to fight for fairer working conditions, solidarity, care and justice in our industries. As a branch of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union, they enable their members to access expert support with case work, legal issues, training, advice and advocacy. Being part of the trade union movement enables them to take a practical approach to connecting landworkers with wider social movements to create systemic change.
Sonja Woodcock
Sonja coordinates FoodWise Leeds, the sustainable food partnership for Leeds. With a strong focus on cross-sectoral partnership working, she has a longstanding interest in the role of public procurement as a lever for food system change and is working with partners at the University of Leeds to develop action research to procure good food for Leeds. Sonja also works regionally, collaborating with food partnership colleagues across West Yorkshire, and is a member of the North Pulses Collaboration.
Sophia Møller Straarup
Sophia is an activist and organiser with Frie Bønder – Levende Land, La Vía Campesina in Denmark. She recently graduated from Lund University with a Master’s in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science and works in her family’s organic apple farm.
Sophia Murphy
Sophia joined the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) as executive director in October 2020. She is a well-established author and speaker on food systems and international economy, focused on resilient food systems and international trade. Sophia has worked with civil society organisations, as well as with government, intergovernmental organisations, and universities. She has a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Science from the University of British Columbia.
Sophie Alexander
Sophie runs Hemsworth Farm in Dorset, where grazing for the organic dairy herd is integrated into the arable rotation. During the last fourteen years, the emphasis for the whole farm system has been to rehabilitate its ecosystem. To this end, the new dairy enterprise was established in 2020.
Sophie Gregory
Along with her husband, Tom, Sophie farms organically on just over 1,200 acres in Dorset. Their farm, which is home to 360 cows, provides organic milk for Arla. Sophie is part of the Beacon Farms Network and, with a passion for connecting more people with the origins of their food, regularly hosts school children on the farm, as well as hosting other public events.
Sophie Holt
Sophie is the founder of Pigment Organic Dyes based at Baddaford Collective in Devon. The social enterprise grows natural dyes whilst offering a therapeutic environment, support, and training to adults with additional needs. PIGMENT considers its trainees to be within the fabric of the business, which supplies artists, dyers and the wider textile industry.
Sophie Robinson
Sophie is the Land Use Plus project manager at Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, looking at landscape scale nature recovery through the lens of food production. The project has taken a particular focus on conservation grazing and deer numbers, including exploring the issues of local meat infrastructure and direct sales.
Stevie Back
Stevie is Grower and Community Engagement Coordinator at Sitopia Farm. Alongside growing veg and flowers at Sitopia Farm, she leads on community engagement through team days and educational visits. She studied a Spanish degree, pursued a career in the charity sector in education and community development, is a coach and a yoga teacher, and has volunteered on organic farms. Stevie is a committee member at Glengall Wharf Gardens and set up a thriving rooftop community garden in Sutton.
Stuart Maitland-Knibb
Stuart has worked extensively in urgent care, emergency medicine and pre-hospital emergency medicine. After working in the military for twelve years as clinical director, he created an out-of-hospital remote centre to deliver urgent and emergency care to be delivered solely by primary carers. He has worked extensively on a Helicopter Emergency Medicine Services (HEMS) platform delivering pre-hospital emergency medicine in rural areas to critically ill or injured patients.
Stuart Mayhew
Stuart is a third generation farmer in Norfolk. Along with wife Rebecca and the fourth generation, Isobel and Jack, they have changed the farm’s course from an intensive production system to an agroecological holistically managed direct to consumer operation. Old Hall Farm’s beating heart is a sixty-calf at-foot dairy selling all produce through an on-farm shop, butchery, restaurant, and online delivery service. They are proud to serve around 1,500 families with food from their farm every week.
Sumayyah Zannath
Sumayyah is a writer, community organiser and creative facilitator. She is part of Land in Our Names, a land and racial justice collective working to get land through reparations. She also works at Platform on food justice and land redistribution in her community in Tower Hamlets and organises as part of the Nejma Collective, an abolitionist group rooted in Islamic principles.
Suzy Russell
Suzy is Coordinator of the Community Supported Agriculture Network UK. With a background in community development, the arts, environment and health, as well as a skill for making new links and forging new collaborations, she brings a new perspective to the food and farming world.
Sylvia Kay
Sylvia is a researcher and project coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI), working on issues related to agrarian and environmental justice, food systems, land and natural resource politics.
Tanguy Martin
Tanguy is an agronomist. For over 15 years, he has been working for land justice, access to land and the development of agro-ecology. He has accompanied the acquisition of some thirty organic farms in western France with the citizen based land coop Terre de Liens. He is currently advocacy officer for this organisation.
Teresa Allward
Teresa and her husband Charlie farm traditional native British breeds of dairy and beef cattle at Langford, near Bristol. They are organic and family-run since the early 1900’s. They supply Yeo Valley as well as selling their beef and milk direct. Teresa and Charlie are passionate about caring for the animals and farming in harmony with nature, and they regularly host visitors to the farm as part of a green social prescribing initiative.
Thomas Daniell
Tom founded Old Tree Brewery CIC, Old Tree Soil and Old Tree Events — social enterprises working for ecosystem restoration and community resilience through fermentation, composting and the celebration of plants. With a background in art and sustainable design, he combines creativity with ecological inspiration and is motivated by the idea of Old Tree as a potentially global network and social movement to help relocalise our food and drink systems and realign human culture with the living world.
Thomas Martin
Tom is a grower at Three Hares Market Garden in Bristol and an MSc student in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of the West of England. His diverse career in food and farming spans catering, butchery, and regenerative livestock production. Now a new entrant farmer, he is developing enterprises at Three Hares. With a BSc in Sound Engineering and Production, his MSc research explored how low-flying planes may affect the eco-acoustic properties of agroecological soil.
Tim Crabtree
Tim is Co-director of Wessex Community Assets (WCA), which supports the development of bioregional economies within fields such as housing, energy, food and textiles. WCA has been working with local farmers for 4 years on field trials of hemp and flax, both for construction uses and for textiles. Tim is also a part-time researcher at the University of Plymouth, focusing on the potential to source and process natural materials from the bioregion.
Tim Lang
Tim is Emeritus Professor at City, University of London’s Centre for Food Policy. His work addresses the challenges of a food system that works for consumers, environment, social justice and public health. He highlights the reluctance to fully address food’s impacts on climate change, biodiversity, culture, water and land use. In 2025, he prepared a report asking how the food system would work in the face of shocks or disruption. Tim is President of Garden Organic and the Heritage Seed Library.
Tim Parton
Tim is a farm manager in south Staffordshire and a world-renowned speaker on Regenerative farming. While also advising farmers around the world at timpartonfarming.com, Tim Farms using biology and nutrition to replace synthetic inputs. He does not use fungicides, insecticides, growth regulators, nor P&K fertiliser, and uses very few herbicides. He believes that balance is everything in growing nutrient rich food, and that it is all about keeping the plant balanced in order to get its immune system working.
Tiwari
Tiwari is a systems thinker, creative participatory facilitator and convenor, leveraging her understanding of food systems, access to land and platforming historically marginalised voices to bridge lived-experience and policy making. She prioritises learning from those at the brunt end of policy decisions, and advocates for just systems transformation: seed by seed, spoon by spoon. She is Partnerships Trustee at Oxford City Farm, and delivers Abundance Oxford’s tree pruning, foraging and surplus harvest.
Tom Blunt
Tom is a Senior Conservation Adviser for the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) where he works to conserve native livestock and equine breeds. His work spans assessing breeds’ conservation status and genetic diversity, promoting the commercial potential of native breeds through their produce, and supporting their use in sustainable land management. Tom’s passion for native breeds and the agricultural industry stems from his family’s Red Poll cattle herd and his time at Harper Adams University.
Tom Booth
Tom is a market gardener and seed grower at East Neuk Market Garden, which he co-owns as part of a new co-operative venture. Tom has been the maternity cover Scotland Coordinator for the Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty Programme for 2025 as a jobshare with his farm colleague, Louise King.
Tom McVeigh
Tom is a farmer in Suffolk and Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot scheme participant. He has undertaken various on-farm trials to try to observe and understand the practical differences between farming systems we’re encouraged to look into vs conventional farming. Tom has a specific interest in nut production and is a Nuffield Scholar on this topic.
Tony Juniper
Tony is a prominent environmental figure. He has led major organisations, run global campaigns and written many books. He began his career as an ornithologist and joined Friends of the Earth, initially leading the tropical rainforest campaign, then appointed Executive Director. He was an advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales, President of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and an Executive Director at WWF-UK. He is now Chair of the Government’s official conservation agency, Natural England.
Tracy Wathen-Jones
Tracy is a Conservation Advisor with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, with over 30 years’ experience in small-scale dairy, organic farming, nature conservation, and regenerative systems. She holds an MSc in Organic Farming and a first-class degree in Environmental Science, focusing on integrating native and rare breeds into sustainable land management.
Vera Hoenen
Vera is a shepherd, spinner, and weaver with a mixed flock of sheep who graze on a wind and solar farm in south Oxfordshire. Her flock produce beautiful high quality fleeces that are blade shorn for flock welfare and fleece quality. Vera is passionate about reconnecting people with wool through talks, workshops, and by creating accessible spaces for people to work with wool like the Swindon Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.
Vicki Hird
Vicki is an experienced and award-winning environmental campaigner, researcher, writer, trustee, entomologist and strategist – working for 35 years mainly on food, farming and environmental issues, policies and solutions at local, national and global level. She is Strategic Lead on Agriculture for The Wildlife Trusts UK, was Head of Farming for the Sustain Alliance, runs an independent consultancy and has published two books on farming, food and invertebrates.
Victoria Llorens
Victoria (she/her/any) is a farmer, organiser, learner in waawiyatanong aka Detroit, Michigan. As a “LA-LA,” Victoria grew up in Los Angeles and cherished time spent with family on Cane River in Louisiana. Victoria lived in intentional community in Appalachia, West Virginia, farming in their gardens and leading at low-income home repair sites in the community. Victoria is the co-manager of the Grow Moore Produce Co-op which is a coalition of farmers building power through worker-owned cooperative development.
Wilf Richards
Wilf is a permaculture designer and author of The Power of Permaculture Principles. Since 2001 he has been working a smallholding near Durham with co-members of Abundant Earth, where he manages the veg box scheme and market garden. He runs permaculture courses, tutors for the permaculture diploma tutor and when he’s got a moment he is also in the punk band Queen’s Screech.
Will Davenport
Will founded Davenport Vineyards in Horsmonden, Kent, and is known for his pioneering work in organic English winemaking. He planted his first five acres of vines in 1991 and has since expanded to nine grape varieties over twenty-four acres across five sites with specific soil characteristics, establishing himself as a leading organic wine producer in the UK. In 2022, he took over management of forty-five acres of non-organic vines and is adapting them to regenerative systems and eventual organic conversion.
Will Leo Hawkes
Will is an insect migration researcher from North Wales currently working for the invertebrate conservation charity, Buglife. Throughout his research career he has been lucky enough to travel the world studying the remarkable insect migrants and collecting their stories to recount to you all.
William Frazer
William runs a diversified rural business with his family on the River Maine outside Cullybackey, Northern Ireland. The business had a long history in the linen industry but is now focused on the generation of renewable energy, farming and regenerating the old mill site as a hub for sustainable business. Previously, William worked at the National Farmers Union, Farmers Weekly and started his career at Forum for the Future developing advice on farming and climate change.
Yuki Chan
Deeply inspired by permaculture, Yuki left Hong Kong three years ago to pursue her passion for farming and seek a deeper connection with land and nature in Devon. She completed an MSc in Regenerative Food, Farming and Enterprise at Schumacher College and a year-long practical traineeship at the Apricot Centre. Though she dreamed of becoming a vegetable grower, a chance meeting led her to Dartmoor Estate Tea, where tea growing reconnected her with her Chinese roots on UK soil.
Zoë Davis
Zoë is a chef based in Bedford. She is passionate about sharing great food and helping people connect with what they eat. Having trained at Ballymaloe Cookery School, she now runs her private chef business (@CarterCookery), puts on supperclubs, and is creating regenerative food courses at Groundschool in Hertfordshire. As a Soil Association Ambassador and through cooking, she tells stories of farming, showcases producers and aims to help people to make better food choices for health and the planet
Zoe Gilbertson
Zoe is a fashion ecologist, educator and designer. Her nature-centred, collaborative practice explores the process and governance required to develop non-extractive fibre and textile systems. Alongside teaching sustainable fibre and fashion, Zoe runs Liflad CIC, a design lab working at the intersections of fashion, fibre farming and enterprise. She is co-founder of the Bast Fibre Network, South West Textile Commons, a Churchill Fellow and Member of Fashion Act Now.
