2010 - 2024

Today, peasants and farmers face threats to their food sovereignty and food security from laws privatising seeds, which are often designed to align with the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) convention. This session introduces UPOV and explores the latest international national mechanisms that intensify the challenges faced by farmers in protecting their seeds. We will present cases of community seed systems from Sri Lanka, highlighting local farmers’ struggles and…

Join us as we take you on the journey of clothes, shoes, accessories and all the pieces that make up the fashion industry puzzle. It all begins and ends in the soil, and like most things in
our lives, fashion is grown in soil. In this session we will be exploring the movement for a better fashion industry. One where farmers are paid fairly, a future where farmers no longer have
to expose…

If we adopt a different mindset which values the production of wool equally to the production of meat from sheep, how would we farm differently? How do we progress to the widespread replacement of unsustainable synthetic materials with ethically and regeneratively produced wool? This session will explore how, for sheep farming to be truly sustainable, we need to be more ambitious in the way we think about this important and undervalued crop. Led by expert…

As a collective, the Barbets Duet is a small, global group of like-minded individuals and families, striving to restore ecological function on their respective parcels of land, around
the world, whilst creating economic opportunity. Throughout this interactive session the story of the group and their lived experience will be shared as well as a discussion on key challenges they have faced such as legacy.

A pressing issue for global farming is the over-use of veterinary pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics and anthelmintics, and the resulting impacts on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and biodiversity loss. One of the ways to reduce antibiotic use on farms is to use well documented alternatives, such as homoeopathy and phytotherapy. In the UK, with so few homoeopathically trained vets in farm practice, farmers have found it difficult to know how best to do this. This talk will…

In the shadow of the climate crisis, the management of common land faces its biggest change since World War II. Focusing on the Lake District, this session will address the importance of upland commons for biodiversity, carbon, water storage and access – and for rural communities whose labour has shaped this landscape over millennia, underpinning its World Heritage Site inscription. The current government support scheme for farmers ends in 2024 and, with ELM far from…

In this session we will show how fibre crops have been rediscovered and are generating excitement in many applications from very low to very high tech applications. We will show how cultivation will address emissions and response to climate change in at least two big sectors. Transport and the building trade have an unacceptably high carbon footprint, which these crops can target; but they are also good for on-farm sustainable soil improvement, reduced inputs and…

Re-Alliance is a global network of INGOs and community practitioners using regenerative approaches to disaster, displacement and development. Our members are involved in innovations in food growing, reforestation, and enhancing biodiversity, particularly in camp or settlement contexts. We are currently working with landscape architects and experienced humanitarian responders to produce a framework for camp design that takes into account the importance of food production, DAY 1 – THURSDAY 4TH JANUARY DAY 1 – THURSDAY 4TH…

How do you go about finding the next stage for your farm if you have no family to take it on? What are useful paths and choices? Where do you start? When is the best time to look at succession? In this session, panellists will consider enterprise stacking, subcontracting activities, share farming, community engagement and feeding the nation (locally) as ways to bring others into a farm’s future. Succession also offers opportunities for entrant farmers…