2010 - 2024

We’ve come a long way together! Come and gather with your friends and colleagues as we celebrate the movement and look forward to a dynamic and agenda-setting two days of learning, sharing and connecting with others who share your vision of a better food and farming system. 

Who controls the food we eat and grow? Deep power asymmetries in food system governance are blocking the transformation we need. For decades, the institutions and policies that affect decision-making about food systems have been captured by corporate overreach, undermining the public good and the rights of people and communities to engage in food system decision-making on their own terms. This event will reveal who really controls agri-food policy and regulatory decisions and how, exposing…

Perennial veg has been taking off for years with home gardeners and allotmenteers but, whilst some classic examples, such as artichokes and asparagus, may be produced by commercial veg growers, uptake remains limited. Hear from Riverford founder Guy Singh-Watson on what’s caught his attention about the potential of perennials, expert perennial grower and founder of Incredible Vegetables, Mandy Barber, revealing the diversity of options perennials present, and get a debrief on micropropagation as a possible…

After almost a century of industrialised agriculture, we’ve found ourselves in a precarious position. We’ve ended up with a food and farming system based on just a few varieties of specialised crops and animals; but with this specialisation comes great risk. Now, in the face of intersecting environmental crises - from global warming to soil degradation and biodiversity loss - we need to (re)build diversity to build resilience. This session will hear from landworkers, food-makers…

This session will explore the vital role local governments play in driving food system change across the UK and examine how local government drives food system change through planning policies and regulations, promoting sustainable agriculture and building opportunities to share knowledge and local buy-in for new technologies. It will also look at how local governments can create opportunities for new routes to market, supporting local food economies and the relevance of food partnerships to support…

The accumulation of land and wealth in Britain was made possible through the colonisation of peoples and lands across the globe; through the profits generated through enslavement; and through the creation of an economic system that was built on exploitation, violence and extraction. Land as reparations to communities who are directly affected by these systems and their fallout is one way repair can be attempted and healing and transformation towards something better made possible. This…

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…

Veterinary professionals operate at the human-animal-environment interface and are trusted advisors to farming clients. Despite their primary professional mandate to protect the animals ‘under their care’ and concern for sustainability issues, a focus of farm veterinary work has traditionally been directed towards the anthropocentric goals of food animal productivity and efficiency. In this session we will unpick the definitions of sustainability to arrive at an ecological paradigm that decentralises the position of humans within the…

An interactive workshop to expand everyday conversations about health/ food justice in ways that support food systems change for agroecological transition. It involves two activities (i) using food items as props to prompt people to consider how far standard nutrition discourse and practice hinders or supports health/ disability justice and food systems change; and (ii) exploring ‘normal eating’, veganism, sustainability and related topics in a way that destabilises binary thinking to offer an alternative –…