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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…

Support for new genetic engineering technologies is quietly growing, even amongst groups claiming to be ‘for’ sustainability, agroecology and even organic. This is happening largely behind closed doors and without the informed input of stakeholders. In addition, there is now a global push to deregulate these technologies. It is a real and invidious threat to the widespread adoption of agroecological farming practices; yet, it is never talked about in those terms. How do we counter…

Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au: I am the River and the River is Me. So say Iwi Māori who live alongside the Whanganui River in Aotearoa/New Zealand, in recognition of their inalienable connection to the land and water they call home. Fundamental to Māori cosmology is the idea that the whenua – the land – is an extension of the self: a relation, an ancestor, a placenta, a home. In recognition…