Author: Tom O’Connor
For the delegate, the buzz and bustle of the ORFC hive is punctuated by head versus heart decisions.
“I should go to this session – it’s about what I do; it’ll inform my work”.
“I want to go to this session – it’s about what I love; it’ll deepen my understanding; give purpose and meaning to what I do”.
So it was, as a new-entrant market gardener, that I prised myself away from the worker bee topics and indulged in some serious ORFC honeycomb – “Land, Food and Spirit”, a discussion on how a more reciprocal relationship with Nature could transform the way we approach food and farming.
Here, though, in the Wesley Methodist Church, was a session far more profound than mere indulgence in the spiritual; delivered by the panel with heart, grace and vision, received by the audience with such energy and reciprocity, that by the end of an hour and a half the packed out Speakers Hall fell into a mutual moment of blissful silence which Chair, Patrick Holden, reluctantly whispered to an end.
On the Panel were Andrew Bovarnick – the United Nations Development Programme’s Head of Food; Sandra Salazar – Farmer and founder of GoGrowWithLove CIC; biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake; biodynamic agronomist Rafael Pflücker; and Wisdom Keeper’s Angharad Wynne, founder of Animate Earth Collective.
Patrick Holden cultivated an introspective atmosphere, reflecting on his personal journey to connect “inner search with outer change”. Informed by Christian teaching, Rudolf Stein and Krishnamurti, he has come to perceive our outward ecological crisis as an inwardly spiritual one. Here again were head and heart but, rather than in conflict, this time inextricably linked.
Sandra Salazar poured forth love, recounting the experiences which led her to establish “GoGrowWithLove”, a CIC “born of spirit”. Sandra illustrated how displacement and generational trauma can be healed through land work wherever one finds themselves, accessing a continuous and universal “direct line” to our ancestral spirits. She united her observations on the wonder and innate love of nature with her vocation to educate children about it.
Rafael Pflücker, working as an agronomist with smallholder farmers in Peru, described how farmers have been able to maintain a spiritual connection, largely unbroken by the ravages of modern agriculture, to their unique terrain – respecting each local mountain as their “Apu”, lord or honoured one and the land in totality as “Pachamama”, mother earth.
He urged each one of us to rediscover the equivalent traditions in our own culture that allow contemporary Peruvian farmers to continue working the land in a ritual fashion, paying tribute and gratitude to the earth and asking her permission to work.
Rupert Sheldrake followed Rafael seamlessly, reminding us of our local sacred connections to these islands and how they are not dead and forgotten but alive and extending an open invitation to us to reunite our land work with our spiritual, cultural heritage.
Andrew Bovarnick introduced the efforts of the Conscious Food Systems Alliance to foment a spiritual transformation in the way we approach farming at a global level. Having become a self-confessed “email machine” in UN development, abstracted from Nature in the convoluted pursuit of “global systemic change”, he felt his heart gently nudge his head – to perceive that our personal values with regard to food and land need to change before decisions can be affected at the highest level.
The panel concluded with Angharad Wynne speaking to ancient wisdom, reaching back to tie the timeless power of animism with the contemporary yearning for connection to land and food. She drew on her deeply personal childhood experiences in the Welsh countryside and brought attention to the manner in which languages shift perceptions; how her own mother-tongue personifies the object, whether tree or stone, as a “who” not an “it”.
Angharad described how calendrical time shifts across cultures, how ancient Celtic people commenced their year at the autumn equinox as the days darkened, and their day at dusk. “Dream first”, she implored.
The session balanced perfectly the spiritually transcendent with focused and impactful visions for the future of food and farming, addressing just how it is we might transcend our current agricultural paradigm permanently.
Later in the day, I returned to the frenetic hum of the Town Hall to take part in a Land, Food and Spirit workshop, facilitated by the Conscious Food Systems Alliance. This smaller group battled the general hubbub to share their experiences as the calm of that short silence in the Wesley Speakers Hall began to ebb away.
But, I realised, over the course of the two sessions, my head had dropped in on my heart for a while. There was a reciprocity I could feed back into my practice – inwardly and outwardly on the market garden.
Here at ORFC, sessions focusing on the spiritual and the intuitive are the context for the work every one of us does – not necessarily tools for, but guidance towards change. The honeycomb isn’t the treat, it’s what our hive is built from. These are the topics we should all learn to waggle-dance to.
Click here to watch the full recording of the ORFC25 session Land, Food, and Spirit
About the Author
Tom is a grower, establishing Green Man Growing market garden in South Devon in 2025. An Apricot Centre graduate and passionate proponent of local, regenerative food, it is his intention to help restore to the land its ability to provide for and reconnect its rural communities.