2010 - 2025

This workshop facilitated by Emergent Generation aims to connect food and farming youth movements in the UK and Europe promoting agroecology. We invite youth under 35 engaged in food and farming action to map our activities, identify synergies, pinpoint gaps, and find opportunities to collaborate — turning ideas into action, setting plans in motion. Whether you are a representative of an organisation or simply curious, this is a space for young people to discuss the…

In this session, we will explore how practices of disobedience and conviviality bring new worlds into being through agroecology and food sovereignty. How can disobedience positively disrupt the status quo and challenge business-as-usual? How does conviviality foster solidarity, care, and right relationships in our work? The panel will include activists, researchers and organisers who have collaborated with avant-gardist action researcher Michel Pimbert. We will reflect on a body of work that has been fueled by…

The Local Food Growth Plan is reaching its final stages following interviews, workshops and research. The plan, by LWA, Sustain, Pasture for Life, SFT, Better Food Traders and FFCC, aims to both attract investment and stimulate activity, creating substantial growth in the local food sector. In this workshop following quick-fire presentations, participants will review areas for action on the themes of infrastructure, citizen demand, the public plate, collaboration, and policy, looking at opportunities, priorities and…

The Seasonal Worker Scheme governs the arrival of up to 47,000 migrant farm workers to the UK each year. As part of this scheme, workers are tied to their recruiter and must pay up front for visas and flights. These features are a major driver of debt bondage and forced labour. In this session, we will be joined by the Landworkers’ Alliance, the Worker Support Centre, and former farm workers to explore the harsh reality…

The Food Hub is a Belgian cooperative wholesaler that works with small-scale, organic producers from Southern Europe. They are a multi-stakeholder coop, so both suppliers (farmers) and customers (shops) are shareholders. In a traditional model, those two have conflicting interests, but The Food Hub have facilitated a model to divide profits by working with a ristorno policy: this shares profits based on the associate’s transactions with the cooperative. But how do you create a fair…

Right now, policymakers are deciding whether cultured meat could help the UK meet our climate targets. But what would it mean for UK farmers? Competing on price and further consolidation of power and profit? Or could it mean new markets or earning a premium for ‘the real stuff’? Before decisions are made that will have far-reaching impacts on our food system, it is time to join the debate. In this session, hear from farmers who…

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a “decision support system for the selection and use of pest control tactics, singly or harmoniously coordinated into a management strategy” (Kogan, 1998). In this session, two applied biologists will provide their latest practical recommendations for managing a selection of pest insect species, and a grower will describe their experience of using IPM strategies. The session will finish with a discussion on identifying and overcoming barriers to effective IPM. This…

Discover the fascinating characteristics of veteran trees and why they are important for biodiversity. Step back in time to learn about the past management of trees we see on farms; the stories they can tell us about our culture and history through time and their sense of place as boundary trees, landscape markers, fragments of lost hedgerows, ancient wood pasture, or woodland. Hear from a farmer about the importance of veteran trees on their farm…

Imagine a farming world where family succession is easily discussed and talked about without emotion or taboo, and where business control and management responsibilities smoothly transition from one generation to the next. Unfortunately today succession in family farming businesses is one of the biggest barriers to progress. It is also a major source of poor mental health, anxiety and stress — so much so that it causes some businesses, or the people that run them,…