ORFC 2025 9 – 10 Jan
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…
In this talk, Adilen Roque, National Coordinator of Peasant-to-Peasant Agroecological Movement of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) of Cuba, will explain the history of the peasant-to-peasant methodology, as well as how this methodology helped to spark an “Agroecological Revolution” in Cuba which today includes more than 100,000 peasant families growing healthy food for their local communities, and has made the country more resilient against the cruel 60-year economic blockade imposed by the United…
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…
Seed Guardians from four Latin American countries share their views and experiences regarding traditional seed saving, organic seed production, networking and the challenges with new laws and regulations. The situation may be difficult, but hope is rising!
In the last two decades, the consolidation of agribusiness in Latin America has pushed traditional farming to the fringes of agriculture. Genetic erosion, or the disappearance of traditional seeds, has been a direct effect of this. It is…
There is a paradox in ‘conventional’ agriculture around the world: growers apply high volumes of nitrogen fertilisers and pesticides in order to promote and protect yields, but pests and pathogens (P&Ps) continue to challenge food security. In this session, a team from the University of Edinburgh will share their recent work that focuses on the biochemistry of crops and offers new explanations as to why this occurs.
Their findings support the conclusions of the…
Indigenous food systems, both in pre-Columbian times and now, are poorly understood by the Western world. Over the millenia, Indigenous food scientists have generated a wealth of biodiversity within the global food system, with 70% of the world's variety of foods come from the Americas. Indigenous peoples perfected–in hundreds of types of bioregions and ecotones)–low energy input-high energy output land management practices. For example, the Haíɫzaqv (ˈheɪltsək) Nation of British Columbia, Canada hand plant massive…
To shift the global food system towards sustainability is going to be expensive. When foundations with billions of dollars in endowments offer to help problems in the food system, it feels like a relief. But if you've an eye on the changes they have brought to food and medicine, the giants of international philanthropy deserve your scepticism. Drawing ideas from their forthcoming book Inflamed, Rupa Marya and Raj Patel will offer examples of how colonialism…
Rosibel Ramos and Kenia Baca Merlo tell their story of how they overcame multiple forms of gender inequality and violence in rural Nicaragua by founding and helping to run the women’s farming cooperative, FEM (Foundation Between Women), which produces coffee, vegetables, honey, wine and hibiscus as well as running its own schools, self-defence groups and community seed banks.
From Estelí in Northern Nicaragua, the two generations of women share their struggle against multiple forms…
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 750
Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
Gather follows Nephi Craig, a chef from the White Mountain Apache Nation (Arizona), opening an indigenous café as a nutritional recovery clinic; Elsie Dubray, a young scientist from the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation (South Dakota), conducting landmark studies…