La Junquera is a major ecosystem restoration and farming project that stretches across thousands of hectares in Spain’s desertifying south. Although Spain is Europe’s most biodiverse country, the south is at the forefront of climate change, aggravated by the effects of intensive horticulture which illegally drain aquifers and destroy biodiversity.
La Junquera is part of a major movement to build a wildlife barrier - through nature restoration projects and farms - to prevent the…

Inspired by the Oxford Real Farming Conference, the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference celebrated its fifth event in November. We explore what it is, why it is needed, and its role in addressing some of the challenges facing food and farming in Wales in the 2020s. Join us for this mini birthday party!

Mainstream agricultural education faces the same crisis as industrial farming itself. There is an urgent need for an overhaul of agricultural learning to offer meaningful solutions to our food system chaos. How can
we create the spaces for a more radical pedagogy under the existing formal systems of education and training? What can we acquire about the learning process from agroecology and its practitioners? How can agroecology revolutionise the learning process itself? What kind…

The Anti-Oppression Circle is a network created and organised over the last three years. Its purpose is to hold space for those most marginalised in our society to have honest and transparent discussions around various topics related to systemic change and dismantling systems of oppression. Through this writing workshop, we will explore poetry from different cultures and contexts that is speaking to this purpose to help us apply the practices ourselves. We will share, reflect…

How can a farm reach net zero? This session focuses on the innovations of three farmers as part of a 43-strong community in Cornwall funded by the Climate Action Fund, part of the National Lottery Community Fund. The Farm Net Zero project is driven by farmers to improve farm resilience by reducing emissions from feed, fuel and fertilizer but at the same time increase soil health and ecosystem services. The speakers are part of an…

From labourers to landowners, livelihoods in agriculture are often precarious. A lack of funded pathways into farming makes careers in producing food both hard to access and difficult to sustain. Finding ways to support these livelihoods will be critical to building the resilient, sustainable and just local food systems we need. This is an interactive workshop as well as the launch of a new report, with findings from a year
of hosting conversations with…

Design is arguably a vital element within an agroecological future. The Masters students of the Architecture School have been working with leading agroecological practitioners including Wakelyns, the Apricot Centre and Community Farm to develop ideas around how good design can support and promote agroecology. They will be displaying their work and asking for your input through some thought provoking questions. Come, see and critique the projects and programmes they have been working on. And maybe…

Exploring Donna Haraway’s wonderful sense of ‘worlds world worlds’, the printing press will be exploring the parallels between the wildly imaginative worlds nurtured at the ORFC that we all take with us out into the wider world, and the worlds that exist within the soil, and the life and possibility they grow. Printing small A5 posters using an 8x5 Adana Printing press, and a selection of vintage and hand-carved rubber stamps, including earthworms, protozoa and…

In the UK, farmland is predominantly used for food production. But as the building industry’s interest in the benefits and applications of lower energy and less harmful materials like hemp, straw, flax and earth grows, competition with and tension between using land for food and for material production is going to increase. This panel will make the case for why we need to look at farmland as a space in which we produce more than…