ORFC 2025 9 – 10 Jan
Most soils across Africa are degrading and being lost to erosion. The conventional approach has been to push chemicals to ensure production. Research increasingly reveals that these chemicals contribute to killing soils, as well as causing harm to human health. Unfortunately, corporate and academic interests ensure a continuation of this ‘chemical life support system’.
During the last 50 years an increasing number of alternatives to the mainstream chemical approach have been emerging around the…
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500
Healthy topsoil forms a living matrix, a “soil sponge” that can soak up, hold, and filter rainwater, and maintain its structural integrity during water and wind events. This natural infrastructure makes life on land possible. By regenerating it, can address many of our major challenges:
- improve the health of crops, animals, and people
- provide resilience to flooding, drought, heatwaves, and wildfires
- recharge water tables
…
Much food production in Europe and North America depends on migrant workers. Yet, most people are not aware of the extreme working and living conditions involved in food production and processing. In many cases workers are people who have been forced to move to regions in the Global North due to climate change and conflict from rural and land-based livelihoods in poorer countries or regions. The criminalisation of migration is making people’s journeys to seek…
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 25 (Full)
In this interactive workshop, author and activist Anna Lappé details the spectrum of food industry influence—from the most obvious (advertising) to the most hidden (like deploying third-party experts). Using real-world examples, she will help us increase our own capacities to spot industry spin. She’ll also explore some strategies advocacy groups and others have used to expose spin and how we can push back against the misinformation.
How can we heal ourselves and the planet? Soil health and gut health are inextricably linked by the food we grow and eat so maybe the solution is right under our feet and within us. Join Dr Sally Bell, GP and functional medicine practitioner, in conversion with Alexis Sinclair, Food and Nutrition Coordinator at FarmED. Hear about Sally’s journey, the Five Foundations, and her focus on the gut biome, soil health and regenerative food and…
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 40 (Full)
The session aims to create a space for dialogue around the idea of agroecology as a movement for decolonization and racial justice. We would like participants to share their experiences and knowledge of agroecology and collectively examine both the opportunities and limitations of agroecology as it is practiced today. Through a series of interactive and dialogic activities we intend to look deeper at how industrialised modes of producing and…
Hear emerging findings from the UK’s largest farmer-led soil carbon research project, alongside cutting-edge insight on our understanding of soil carbon and the best protocols for measuring it. With discussion on why this is increasingly relevant for farmers and the associated opportunities and challenges.
Interest in soil health and its capacity to sequester carbon has risen dramatically in recent years. In some countries, farmers receive payments for soil carbon sequestration. However, uncertainties still exist in…
In this panel we will hear directly from three countries – Honduras, Colombia and Paraguay – which have rich experiences of peasant struggle but also have very high levels of criminalization against peasants, indigenous, and afrodescendent peoples and other defenders of human rights. Each panelist, which represents a different member organization of the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo – CLOC-Vía Campesina), the Latin American expression of La Via…
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 30 (Full)
Globally we are starting to see women step into roles traditionally held by men while staying true to their feminine values’. If so, what are these values? Moreover, does livestock farming, with its emphasis on the cycle of life - ie reproduction, birth, and the rearing of youngstock - require specific traits considered to be inherently ‘feminine’’? How are these balanced against the goal to achieve maximum yield and…