ORFC 2025 9 – 10 Jan
Access to fresh, affordable, nourishing, locally produced and culturally appropriate food (as well as the fuel to cook it and time to prepare it) should be the guaranteed right of every individual and household. However, global food systems are increasingly dominated by an ‘industrial diet’ where highly processed and low nutrient foods are widely available and most easily accessible. Many countries, including the UK, have shameful levels of food insecurity and diet-related ill health, and…
The Food, Farming Countryside Commission is launching new research looking at how future farming systems based on agroecological principles could be feasible for UK nations – removing the need for artificial inputs whilst producing healthy food to feed a growing population, contributing to net zero targets and making more space to restore nature.
In this session, the panellists will explore some of the details of this research, and talk about the questions that it…
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…
At last year’s World Food Day, UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that he would convene a UN Food Systems Summit in the fall of 2021. Little did anyone know that the stakes would become so acute so fast. The COVID-19 pandemic has quickly become a hunger crisis. At this moment of upheaval, what gets decided in the next few years will determine the path for global food governance for decades to come. Guterres‘s goal…
Africa faces multiple challenges related to our food systems, including hunger, malnutrition, obesity, noncommunicable diseases, the climate crisis, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, cultural erosion, and other climate related shocks, such as pest and disease outbreaks and escalating prices of external inputs. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the weaknesses of current food systems to meet the needs of African peoples.
These interconnected challenges demand a holistic response, with African civil society and institutions…
Biodiversity is critical to sustainable farming. Evidence from long-term field experiments (50 – 170 years) suggest that the central relationship between microbes, organic carbon and soil structure determines soil system performance. Detailed work at Rothamsted led by Prof. Andrew Neal is demonstrating the strong relationship between organic carbon, structure and the hydrodynamic behaviour of soil. Among other sources, farmyard manure plays an important role in managing soil systems. The experiments also demonstrate significantly higher levels…
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,…
Staggeringly, “humanity has wiped out 68% of global wildlife since 1970”, according to the WWF (2020). If that stat wasn’t terrifying enough, it's also been concluded that the annual rate of destruction is increasing. In other words, the eradication of the remaining 32% of global wildlife is speeding up! And the biggest cause cited is agriculture.
Urgent action is needed, and a growing number of voices in international conservation are demanding that humanity should…
Too much investment flowing into agriculture is perverse – shoring up inequitable food systems that grow an ever narrower range of foods and exacerbate climate change. Massive public and private investments in agroecological food systems and agroecological movements are urgently needed – investments that align with agroecological principles and don't serve to greenwash investor portfolios. This session will explore why and how philanthropies and bilateral and multilateral development agencies invest in agroecology, both the challenges…