ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

No-till arable farming has revolutionised the arable farming mindset and is of interest to organic farmers because of its potential to reduce cultivations whilst providing weed control, fertility and soil health. But is it possible?

Cover crops or green manures have always been part of organic arable systems but are now commonly used conventionally as part of regenerative farming systems.. The 4 pillars of regenerative farming are no-till, continuous ground cover, crop diversity and livestock integration.

In organic systems, cover crops have generally been ploughed in to provide fertility for the rotation but adopting organic no-till will require termination of the cover crop and this is difficult for organic farmers who cannot use chemicals.

One solution? A non-aggressive, low growing permanent cover crop such as small white clover, which shades out weeds and provides fertility.

In this session, we talk to two farmer-participants from our Innovative Farmer programme. They have been looking at the potential of no-till with living mulches with a group of organic and conventional farmers running on-farm trials, plus a European organic farmer who carries it out already.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 70 [FULL]

In November 2021, the 26th UN Climate COP in Glasgow will face the monumental task of bridging the gap between countries’ current climate commitments and the significant transformation needed to tackle the climate emergency. With food systems currently accounting for 1/3 of total greenhouse gas emissions, the road joining Glasgow to Paris and the important goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees must go through the farm gate and involve both farmers and their local communities for a just transition. While cities and farmers around the world lead the way with integrated food strategies to drive food system sustainability, neither they nor food systems sustainability are part of the negotiations at COP26.

Recognising that global change is enacted locally, the Glasgow Process aims to address this gap by bringing together cities, farmers and other local actors to amplify their voices at COP. This interactive workshop builds on the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration, which brings together local governments of all sizes in a unified call to put food and farming at the heart of the global response to the climate emergency. It explores the methodology of the Fork to Farm dialogues, which aim to build understanding, trust and relationships between cities, local communities and farmers that can drive the food systems transformation we need.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

Hear from three farmers who have adapted and innovated to ensure their livestock enterprises survive beyond subsidy by getting to grips with their financial management, optimising forage utilisation and responding to market demand.

Many livestock enterprises in the UK have been reliant on income from the Basic Payment System under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) to improve their farm business turnover. This session considers novel ways for livestock to support a farm business’ provision of public goods and explore ways to enhance productivity and improve viability.

Collaboration is key to future farming success and our panel of farmers will share what they have done to adapt and model their businesses in order to be flexible and take advantage of opportunities such as flying flock grazing. Also how they have embraced technology and the value of data in decision making.

In particular, this workshop is based around the experience of one farmer who went through a thorough review of performance, informed and underpinned by their participation in The Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme. We also draw on the knowledge gained by the Soil Association’s involvement in the Defra-funded Future Farming Resilience pilots.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

This interactive session is aimed at anyone interested in strengthening agroecology, especially farmers, activists, donors/funders, researchers and policy makers.

Agroecology promotes radical transformation of food and agriculture based on ecological principles, guided by visions of justice and led by farmers and citizens. It is increasingly embraced as a response to converging socio-ecological crises. However, almost all funding continues to flow to projects that undermine agroecology and strengthens the global, industrial farming system, despite widespread agreement that it is an engine of pollution, climate change and zoonotic spillover.

Existing ways of financing projects and organisations are not suited to support radical agroecological change on the ground. In this interactive session, we will discuss what shifts can be made in private, philanthropic and public financing to effectively realise the transformative potential of agroecology.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 50

Farmer-to-farmer learning is a pillar of the food sovereignty and agroecology movements, enabling territorially-specific learning and alliance-building to support farmers’ livelihoods and broader socio-political transformations. Most accounts of experiences in this field are based on rural contexts and rural farm models. However, the broadening food sovereignty and agroecology movement is also reaching out to urban and peri-urban farmers, some of whom were once rural and found themselves absorbed by expanding urbanisation. Their livelihoods are affected by specific problems of neoliberal urbanisation: speculative land markets and gentrification impacting access to land and housing; erosion, pollution, and destruction of living soils; degradation of riverways; fragmentation of farmland and progressive farmers’ isolation from solidarity networks of proximity; lack of farming infrastructure; ongoing deskilling and producers-consumer’s separation.

In this workshop, the organisers would like to hear from farmers and farmers’ movements of any political and practical training, strategising and learning initiatives that they have/are developing, to address these specific ‘urban’ challenges. This session aims to contribute to the co-creation of a ‘toolbox’ of strategies for shaping a political urban agroecology. The organisers will begin the session sharing some experiences drawn from the www.urbanisinginplace.org project. Participants are encouraged to prepare a 5-10 minute account of their experience.

This session will be of interest to farmers and activists engaged in farmer training and in the support and empowerment of peri-urban and urban agroecological farmers.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 250

How can we bring about people’s control of technology? How can grassroots activists and popular movements take on the might of corporations who wish to impose new technologies on us? This workshop session, in collaboration with ETC Group, is an opportunity for activists from different communities around the world to connect and learn from each other’s experiences in struggles about technologies in the food system. What were the lessons for current times that can be learnt from opposing Terminator Technology in the early 2000’s? How can popular movements shape those future technologies that might affect them? The discussion will start with a description of work by the Latin America Network for the Social Assessment of Technology (TECLA) by Verónica Villa.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

The workshop will look at on-farm alternatives to soya as a protein source and alternative soya products not associated with deforestation.

Feeding pigs and poultry entirely on organic and regionally sourced feed is a long-held ambition of many organic and agroecological farmers. OK-Net EcoFeed, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 scheme, is helping them achieve this goal.

In this workshop, we look at two systems which could replace soya as a protein source: insects and duckweed, and we hear from a farmer aiming to produce eggs from a soya free diet in the UK. 

We also explore the potential for European soya to be used as an alternative to US and South American soya bean meal, reducing emissions associated with transport while growing soya on existing arable land and without causing deforestation.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

In this participatory workshop, Rob Hopkins will build on the creative process shared in his earlier talk, offering a more experiential immersion into some of the key ideas. He will bring along his Time Machine, built during lockdown in his garage from plans he found online, and invite participants to join him on a journey to a near future; that is the result of our having done everything we could possibly do to improve our food and farming system.

This will be an act of collective time travel - a first for ORFC delegates! - and will carry participants to a future where agroecology is at the forefront of our food and farming sector. He will also give a number of tools you can use in your work in order to inspire the imagination of those around you. A rare opportunity to work directly with environmental activist and writer, Rob Hopkins, on imagining a better future for us all.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

Join us - a panel of nine women ranchers across the US - for a facilitated weaving of conversation on the creative, collaborative, and diverse approaches to leadership within ranching communities and land stewardship. Hear stories of how self inquiry and experience are mapping a radically different path forward in a commitment to care for land. Connected through the Women in Ranching community across the western United States, the women on this panel are each shifting the world toward a more remarkable vision of what’s possible. This simple yet profound process of robust conversation is one of the most important efforts we can do to reconnect us to each other, to the land, and to our food system.

In this conversation, we’ll explore the work to solve complex ecological and social challenges in ranching communities such as land access, vital relationships, growing the next generation, failure and vulnerability, marginalized and silenced peoples, equitable and non-traditional funding to cash-flow a startup ranching business, interconnectedness of soil, grass, grazing, diversity, equity, recognition, inclusion, honoring lands for medicines and healing, and how being in relationship with land and collaborating with other life offers openings for renewing the spirit.

To accommodate the number of speakers, this session will be on Zoom and run for 90 minutes.