Rogelio and his daughter Michel Simbaña of the Kitu-Kara Nation share with us their experiences of 20 years, starting with a mini organic garden and growing up to two interconnected farms in different ecosystems, their work with their local community preserving the Sacred Mountain Ilaló, and the organic shop they opened in February, just in time for the Covid-related food crisis.

Rogelio was born and raised as a poor indigenous farmer. When he was…

Beekeeping is accessible to everyone: it doesn’t require ownership of land, capital investment or great time commitment, but it brings benefits of pollination and harvests of nutritious food and medicine. Local bees, local materials and the knowledge of local beekeepers provide all that is needed; skills in understanding bees and forage in the landscape can be learned. Recognising the dependence of bees on abundant and unpolluted landscapes becomes an incentive for beekeepers to protect and…

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 100 (Full)

Subtle but powerful, this workshop addresses the inevitable next big step in the evolution of sustainable agriculture. Grounded in the indigenous worldviews and experiences of farmers and food gathers over millennia, it explores how we can reclaim our co-creative relationship with nature through working with subtle energies in non-physical realms.

Julia Wright will chair this workshop and provide an introductory overview based on the forthcoming publication on this…

**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…

ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED. LIMITED SPACES: 500

Designing wine farming to mimic healthy ecosystems has created resilience to the vagaries of climate change, labour shortages and continuous increases in costs of production. Holistically designed vineyards function primarily off of solar energy by using adaptive grazing during any season. Soils remain covered throughout the year, tillage is eliminated, biodiversity and soil carbon can significantly increase while tractor use (fossil fuels), labor, water and fertility inputs can be…

Among much else climate change will affect rainfall. There will be more floods, more droughts and both will be more unpredictable. Civil engineers immediately think in terms of reservoirs and conduits and the rest - all very expensive and unnatural. But we should as far as possible let nature do the work for us. One of the best civil engineers in the world is the beaver with its supreme ability to manage water: damning streams…

This year more than any has shown how resilient agroecological farms are. Many farms in China's CSA network have performed very well during the pandemic, both economically as well as being responsive to the needs of the consumer who realised the essential necessity to eat good, healthy food to boost their immunity in the face of the "pandemic enemy”. The effect of this is that producer-consumer relationships have grown and changed in that the bond…

Farming for 1.5°C is an independent inquiry that was set up in 2019 to find consensus between a panel of scientists, farmers and environmental NGOs on how Scottish farming can contribute to keeping global warming to no more than 1.5°C. The panel was innovative in its make-up as well as its ways of working, interested in building relationships and respect amongst its members and those providing evidence. All of the members went through a journey…

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…