ORFC 2025 9 – 10 Jan
**Many apologies, this session has now been cancelled due to ill health.**
Richard Perkins is an innovative farmer, educator and the author of the widely acclaimed manual Regenerative Agriculture. He is also the co-owner of Ridgedale Farm in Sweden where he teaches farm-scale permaculture. His blogs have been viewed more than 9 million times and he has over 100,000 Youtube subscribers for his live trainings and online courses.
Richard spent 2020, talking with past students…
Competition for land and water around the world is growing due to surging global demand for minerals and metals critical to transitions in the energy, industry and military sectors. Mining corporations and states are on a collision course with their own citizens, and with farming and fishing communities in particular.
In this session we will hear from community representatives on the frontlines of struggles in Finland, Colombia and Ireland to prevent mining from destroying…
The IALAs (Instituto Agroecológico Latinoaméricano, or Latin American Institute of Agroecology) are a process led by La Via Campesina to train young people from social movement organizations in agroecology. Agroecology is the farming model that rescues peasant and indigenous culture, ensures the construction of food sovereignty, and the only model that can cool the planet in a time of climate disaster.
In this talk, we will hear about the history of the constructions of…
Smallholder farmers in the global south represent some of the world’s most financially underserved communities. Often these farmers struggle to balance subsistence farming with the desire to invest in cash crops that would allow for increased income. By contrast, institutional and other private ethical, social and impact investors find it difficult to identify and support investment-ready smallholder farmer pipelines, primarily using private debt and private equity. Consequently, the tendency has been to invest in mid-sized…
The discovery of bacteria as a cause of disease ushered in a 'sterile' era - giving us a century in which medicine and agriculture killed off germs, insects, weeds, and other perceived pests in hopes of improving life, without understanding that all living systems are nested, and that we cannot kill off parts of the biological workforce without threatening the whole. This 'get rid of bad things' approach now sneaks in everywhere, even with the…
Regenerative food systems expert, Javier Carrera, shares with us the strategies of a long struggle to protect ancestral maize in Ecuador, along with the cultural practices related to this special plant. He will talk about what maize is in Ecuador and why it is so important and share lessons to transform organic maize systems worldwide.
Javier has been fascinated by maize for as long as he can remember, partly because it has so many different…
Around the world livestock farmers face challenges from infectious disease, parasites and various stress related issues. Meanwhile, globally, efficacy of antibiotics and other veterinary pharmaceuticals is breaking down, threatening human health as well as livestock and planetary health. While many agri-industry and research organisations are turning to, and trusting, genetic engineering and biotechnology for a solution, more ecologically and biologically sound alternatives are not getting the attention they deserve – in terms of both prevention…
Our food system is central to the most critical issues of our time. Not only is food the one thing that we produce that everyone, everywhere, needs every day, but its production – as well as its consumption – connects us intimately with the natural world. But the globalised food system has separated us from the sources of our food, thereby severing the land-based relationships that informed our species’ entire evolution. This system has become…
We are witnessing the increasing financialisation of land and territories as land and natural resources are sold off to financial actors such as banks, pension funds, and insurance companies. These actors often make use of complex investment webs involving any number of intermediaries, brokers, tax avoidance loopholes and off-shore schemes. All of these are attempts to distance themselves from public scrutiny, regulation, taxation and accountability. This is hugely disempowering for communities as it means that…