Holistic Approach

How to farm using biology and natural capital rather than chemistry

Farming is at a crossroads and critical to a new path will be utilising natural capital and our soil biology to reduce inorganic inputs and create better margins.

This session will explore the transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture, what the impacts have been from fertilisers and chemicals not only for our soils but also the nutritional value of our food. We will cover:

How by introducing biology into our soils can reverse this damage,improve the nutritional density of our food and how this can be achieved at a practical farming level by activating
Nature’s own soil food web

Speakers/hosts include:

Harry Holden – Harry is a director at Springfield Agri, having spent many years in the chilled food industry can see the possibilities that a new way of farming presents to the next generation of Land managers

Daniel Tyrkiel – Daniel is a Director at soil ecology lab. His passion is to return the soil to a growing system which is enhanced by the biology that has always been there and provide the practical solutions to how it can be achieved

Mushrooms, self-sufficiency and peat

Hosted by the Soil Association

The UK is less than 50% self-sufficient in mushrooms which is strange for a crop mostly grown in non-season dependant conditions. Opportunities for increasing UK mushroom production appears to be a low hanging fruit. We explore the aspirations and pitfalls of running an organic mushroom business selling both edible and medicinal produce and discuss scope for mycoremediation – cleaning up the environment using unproductive mushroom substrate. Upscaling mushroom production has its benefits and challenges but could small scale horticultural enterprises diversifying into mushroom production be a solution? We examine how new entrants could access mushroom growing through relatively cheap converted portable spaces and trial-before-you-buy schemes. Peat has been a contentious input in mushroom production (particularly for the infamous button mushroom). As part of Organic-PLUS research the Soil Association has been looking at some of the challenges facing the industry.

Speakers/hosts include:

Hugh Blogg – Hugh is Soil Association Horticultural Advisor, Farming and Land Use Team and has experience running a small-scale enterprise – Fungusloci – an urban mushroom micro-farm growing gourmet mushrooms on spent coffee. He leads on potato supply chain work focusing on the uptake of blight resistant varieties within retail. Further areas of focus include issues around seed for small scale growers, technical organic gardening queries, supporting the Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, and coordinating grower support for organic vineyards. Hugh has been involved in work on innovative solutions in organic agriculture and better connecting organic farming, carbon sequestration and soil health.

Tom Baxter – Tom is founder of Bristol Fungarium – producer of the UK’s only organic certified medicinal mushroom tinctures, grown and produced in Somerset

James Scriven – James is founder of Mycogeneration – an applied mycology business helping small-scale producers diversify into mushroom production

Building a vibrant workforce in our landscapes

Hosted by FFCC

What might a Land and Nature Skills Service for Cumbria look like? We will be focusing on mapping initiatives in Cumbria and Northern England.

Come along to see the skills initiatives we have mapped and add to it. We will discuss what the opportunities, challenges and gaps are based on our online NRFC session, discussions at this session and broader scoping work.

We will share a picture what a Land and Nature Skills Service might look like and through this session we hope to:
– continue to build on the networks, make more connections
– join up the dots between what’s going on and what the priorities are

This will feed into the continued process of scoping to support delivery of what’s needed.

Background:

Highly skilled people are needed to enable a transition to regenerative and holistic farming approaches and deliver on national (and even international) priorities in the context of the multiple and interlinked biodiversity, climate and health crises. Access to knowledge, learning, training and employment are vital to ensure a just transition.

In Cumbria, the need for training and employment is framed by the loss of Newton Rigg College as it was, the need to support farmers to transition to new policy focused on public goods delivery, and the need to deliver on other policy priorities such as green recovery, net zero carbon and nature recovery.

We have been in a process of codesign since October 2020 and have begun scoping what’s needed to deliver land- and nature- based skills training and learning in Cumbria. This has led to a proposal for a Land and nature skills Service for Cumbria, which could act as a central hub of information, support increased delivery and act as an intermediary between policy priorities and capacity for delivery locally. This would support people wanting to join the sector and those already in it to access information, resources and contacts they need.

Speakers/hosts include:

Hannah Field – Hannah Coordinates the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission’s (FFCC) Cumbria Inquiry and is a PhD Student at the University of Cumbria, researching Common Land. Hannah has spent the last 10 years in Cumbria, having worked for Forestry England, run her own business in wool craftwork, as well as studying at the University (BSc (Hons) in Animal Conservation Science and PGDip Ecosystem Services Evaluation). Her research and practical interests are in how diverse perspectives and values in land management can be brought together for social and ecological benefit through place-based decision-making.

Hannah is also passionate about wool and natural fibres grown regeneratively in the UK. She also develops regenerative livelihood programmes and helps with horticulture and livestock on a permaculture smallholding.

Carol Moffat – Carol is from The Farmer Network which is a farmer owned not-for-profit Company, limited by guarantee. We have over 1,100 farmer members and our mission is to help sustain our members’ businesses and maintain the environment, landscape and rural communities of Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales. The Farmer Network provides a range of services including fuel buying and organising training courses and workshops for farmers. We also apply for funding for projects that support farmers including those that help young people develop a farming related business, improve animal health and providing advice to farmers during the agricultural transition. www.thefarmernetwork.co.uk/

About Carol: Carol works for the Farmer Network as a project manager and the local coordinator for the Yorkshire Dales. She manages a variety of projects including coordinating the Swaledale Facilitation Fund and a project supporting farmers in the Westmorland Dales. She farms at Garsdale and is also Secretary of Baugh Fell Commoners Association and the local branch of the North of England Mule Association.

Jamie Norrington – Jamie works as the Education, Training & Volunteering Officer for Cumbria Wildlife Trust working with school pupils, college students and volunteers involved in lifelong learning about nature, ecology and local wildlife. He would like to see many more formal training opportunities for all levels of participants in our county.

The Trust has hosted Countryside Apprenticeships for many years, which have trained local young people to become Cumbria’s newest countryside rangers at the National Trust, John Muir Trust and North Pennines AONB etc, as well as postgraduate training that helped others progress to roles with the British Antarctic Survey, Fisheries Authority and many other leading organisations.

The Trust also hosts sandwich year placements from the University of Cumbria and research students from a range of universities.

Paul Cambre – Paul joined Growing Well in 2020 in a new role, ‘Head Grower’, to maximise sustainable income from our organic growing enterprise. Paul is from New Orleans and has worked and studied in the US, Canada and China. He has a Masters in sustainable agriculture and was previously Head Grower for a local two Michelin-starred restaurant.

Growing Well offers a range of training opportunities for the people they work with including a chance to study for horticultural qualifications, practical training in tractor driving, and other useful skills. For people working in the office and cooking activities, there are opportunities to attend relevant training. Find out more: www.growingwell.co.uk/

Charlotte Bickler – Charlotte leads the Knowledge Exchange and Policy team at the Organic Research Centre, ensuring that ORC’s research gets out to its key stakeholders in the best format possible. She is based in West Yorkshire and has worked as a researcher at the ORC, Kew Gardens and The University of Bristol. Most recently, she has studied the application of evolutionary breeding within organic systems and developed an on-farm organic variety testing network (now a DEFRA funded project, LiveWheat) with her ORC Crops Team colleagues, Organic Arable and a group of participatory farmers. She has also coordinated knowledge exchange and on-farm trials of crop mixtures and worked to understand the enablers required to deliver crop diversification in European agriculture. She is working to develop local hubs built around Organic Principles and practices via the Organic at the Heart project which developed out of the NRFC20 session that she led (www.organicresearchcentre.com/our-research/research-project-library/organic-at-the-heart/).

Farm walk: Growing Well and Low Sizergh Farm

Hosted by Growing Well and Low Sizergh Farm

Growing Well Kendal and Low Sizergh Farm are both based from the Sizergh Estate in Kendal.

Growing Well Kendal is a mental health charity, training centre and the biggest producer of organic vegetables in Cumbria. Between Monday and Thursday every week Growing Well open their doors to members of the community who have been referred via their GP due to their mental health to learn how to grow, sew, hoe and much more to provide veg boxes for the local community ‘crop share’ with a friendly team of volunteers at hand. The lead growers at the site will be able to walk you around the 8-year crop rotation on site and talk you through why organic practices are so important to them and the amazing progress they have made in the past few years.

Low Sizergh Farm is a working farm still run by three generations of the family. Alison can be found running the farm shop, gift gallery and café, whilst her brother Richard (who will be leading the tour) runs the farm with his son Matthew. John jokes that he’s now the farm boy sent to run all the errands and Marjorie spends as much time as possible painting in her shed. More than 50 local people are employed with Paul Seward working on the farm for nearly 30 years. They do everything with the future in mind, looking after the soil, the landscape and wildlife whilst being part of a vibrant rural economy. Their main crop is the grass that the cows eat all year round which helps them produce milk that they sell in the shop vending machine, the organic milk suppliers cooperative OMSCO and a local cheese and ice cream maker.

A point of interest would be how the farm started out as organic, changed to non-organic practices then back to organic for an array of reasons you’ll be able to discover on the tour.

You will need to book places on this walk separately. More information will be sent to all ticket-holders. There is additional information about Low Sizergh Farm below.

Low Sizergh Farm is a working farm still run by three generations of the Park family. They do everything with the future in mind, looking after the soil, the landscape and wildlife whilst being part of a vibrant rural economy.

Milk is sold through a vending machine outside the farm shop, the organic milk suppliers cooperative OMSCO and to a local cheese and ice cream maker.

Cows Youngstock: 168 Holstein x Swedish Red x Montbeliarde 109 Young
stock, cross breeding for 20 years with a strong emphasis on healthy cows and milk from forage.

Autumn block calved over 12 weeks

Grassland management:

All grazing is rotational, dairy cow platform split into 33 paddocks 1.45 HA 12-hour breaks, YS moved daily fields splitusing electric fences, front and back, with mobile water troughs. Sheep moved weekly.

Dry cows are mob grazed over parkland and permanent pasture.

Re seeding cow grazing with simple herbal ley ryegrass white & red clover chicory & plantain. Silage ryegrass red clover chicory and plantain. still experimenting to find the best mix, 4 cuts of silage and round bales from surplus grass on grazing area.

Arable: Spring barley and peas for whole crop on a 4-year rotation over the silage area

Conservation work:

Traditional hedge management
Re-planting of orchards with local varieties of apple, damson, plum
Creation of pond
Fencing off less useful grassland for wildlife habitat farm trail
HLS scheme ends Jan 22 considering the options

A point of interest would be how the farm started out as organic, changed to non-organic practices then back to organic after trainings in Holistic management and farm scale permaculture see how these practices have been incorporated in the farms management on the tour.

Farm walk: Working with farmers to balance environmental priorities and a profitable farm business

Hosted by the Ribble Rivers Trust

The Ribble Rivers Trust have worked with many Ribble Catchment farmers over the past decade. During the years we have been asked many questions, one of the most popular being how can I deliver environmental benefits whilst still having profitable business? This is what we are working on with all of our farmers. The Ribble Rivers Trust would like to invite you to site visit at one of the farms we have worked with for many years – Laund Farm, near Chipping, in the Forest of Bowland. Here we will discuss how we have worked with the farm, what environmental management we have recommended and how we have worked with the farmer to develop a sustainable farm business whilst also achieving environmental gains. We will discuss:
– Introduce the site, the aims of the farm and what the farmers aims were from the initial visit
– What was discovered from the pinpoint
– What funding was available
– What has been achieved
– What has been developed/ changed over time to both have environmental and farm business gains

You will need to book places on this walk separately. More information will be sent to all ticket-holders.

Lifting the lid – food game

Hosted by FoodFutures

Rod has spent the last year developing an educational board game on resilient food called ‘Lifting the lid’. The game works with a range of different food types and illustrates the difference between conventional and agroecological options for its production. For each food there are scores for its effect on human health, natures diversity, community building and other resilient food criteria. There are chance cards that help show how we can care for our future food system. This is a board game for up to 8 people . There will be 3 boards (total 24 participants). This game is in development so discussion and feedback will be encouraged. The intention of the game is to give participants an inside look at our food system and hopefully the participants will become inspired to change to a more agroecological future for food.

Speakers/hosts will include:

Rod Everett – Rod is an organic farmer in the Forest of Bowland producing unusual apple cider vinegar to stimulate health. An ecologist, researcher for FoodFutures, farm advisor, permaculture teacher and natural flood management consultant. He is also a founder of the Northern Real Farming Conference

Farm walk: conservation grazing in harmony with nature

You are invited to a farm walk by Bill and Cath Grayson who run a conservation grazing business in the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Our animals graze a variety of wildlife-rich habitats on land that is recognised for its nature conservation value. They are managed in ways that help maintain and enhance the biodiversity-value of these special places, where we work in close cooperation with the conservation bodies who care for these sites. At the same time as delivering these important benefits for wildlife, our livestock are also able to provide an important source of healthy food in line with agroecological principles (organic, pasture-fed, high welfare, free-range). They need more time in which to do this but we feel it is reflected in the taste and nutritional quality of the final product. Sign up for our farm walk if you would like to learn more about how agroecological farming works in harmony with nature.

You will need to book places on this walk separately. More information will be sent to all ticket-holders.

Can organic principles and practices guide us in building community-led food and farming systems?

Hosted by the Organic Research Centre

At NRFC20 we ran a session to explore how we could develop an agroecology food and farming network in the North of England – at the same time, growing and connecting networks emerged as a strong theme from across the conference as a way to continue to develop the movement for better food and farming in the North of England. In our session, we identified three key areas to expand:

Bringing communities together across the region – creating an alliance that enables learning between the local level alternative food/farming initiatives.
Reflecting on our experiences to make sure we ‘catch the wave’ – that is, learning from existing successful (and not so successful) initiatives on how to make the most of the momentum building behind finding alternatives to the current system.
Communicating a common cause and expanding beyond our existing communities (e.g., different cultural landscapes) – including the notion of citizens identifying with the role that they play in developing a healthy, resilient food system. Being clear about the vision for the future that we want.

At NRFC21, we would like to build on this through the exploration of the values that we believe must underlie the self-sustaining hubs/networks that can build local economies. This will include exploring past and current experiences from organic farming in the UK – particularly in the North of England, where opportunities for expansion of organic and agroecological practices have been identified but challenges have also been identified.

There is a strong belief that real organic and agroecological principles can only be put into practice through the development of local communities and economies, although communities and economies built on shared values can (and do) exist and thrive beyond localities. However, ‘values’ in the abstract are not enough, communities and economies are built on ‘functional hubs’ e.g., markets, equipment or input sharing (e.g. seeds), shared transport/labour and shared identity (which occasionally emerges as local currencies, branding). Traceability, accountability, and support must also be considered.

Identifying and nurturing such ‘functional hubs’ based on farm practice and working structures is critical in developing genuinely alternative farming and food. To support this, in this session we will explore how the Organic Principles can guide the development of such hubs; what the practices are that we feel should feature on the farms and food businesses we choose to build local hubs around; and, how community culture and needs can be channelled as a driver to achieve truly sustainable local economies.

We would like to invite all those working towards embodying the principles of Health, Ecology, Fairness and Care, that offer the example of what is possible, to gather and share their experience. The ambition is to determine the synergies between what currently exists, identify gaps, and develop a framework to guide the development of local initiatives – from field to fork – that can de-mystify labels and make the fruits of an agroecological food and farming system accessible.

Speakers/hosts include:

Charlotte Bickler – Charlotte leads the Knowledge Exchange and Policy team at the Organic Research Centre, ensuring that ORC’s research gets out to its key stakeholders in the best format possible. She is based in West Yorkshire and has worked as a researcher at the ORC, Kew Gardens and The University of Bristol. Most recently, she has studied the application of evolutionary breeding within organic systems and developed an on-farm organic variety testing network (now a DEFRA funded project, LiveWheat) with her ORC Crops Team colleagues, Organic Arable and a group of participatory farmers. She has also coordinated knowledge exchange and on-farm trials of crop mixtures and worked to understand the enablers required to deliver crop diversification in European agriculture. She is working to develop local hubs built around Organic Principles and practices via the Organic at the Heart project which developed out of the NRFC20 session that she led (https://www.organicresearchcentre.com/our-research/research-project-library/organic-at-the-heart/).

Lawrence Woodward – Lawrence is a co-founder of the Organic Research Centre and was its director for 30 years. Under Lawrence’s directorship ORC and its advisory service helped establish and develop many farmer-based initiatives including the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-op, Organic Arable, The Organic Growers Alliance and a national Organic Farm Demonstration Network. Lawrence is currently a director of Whole Health Agriculture and continues to work with a range of farmer-based projects on health, food quality, seeds and producer development. He was one of the lead authors of the international Organic Principles of IFOAM (the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements).

Hannah Field – Hannah coordinates the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission’s (FFCC) Cumbria Inquiry and is a PhD Student at the University of Cumbria, researching Common Land. Hannah has spent the last 10 years in Cumbria, having worked for Forestry England and run her own business in wool craftwork, as well as studying at the University (BSc (Hons) in Animal Conservation Science and PGDip Ecosystem Services Evaluation). Her research and practical interests relate to how diverse perspectives and values in land management can be brought together for social and ecological benefit through place-based decision-making.

Steven Jacobs – Steven has been working in food and farming for 30 years, starting in market gardening and moving through farming to retail via catering. Following work with the Permaculture Association, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, Fresh & Wild (now Wholefoods Market) and Essential Trading Co-operative, Steven joined Organic Farmers & Growers in 2007. Steven represents OF&G on a number of roundtables, forums and working groups: Agricology, IFOAM EU, the NFU Organic Forum and the Agriculture Working Party of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. Steven is the founder and coordinator of the annual organic farming conference, the OF&G National Organic Combinable Crops, also known as NOCC. Steven chairs the Welsh Grain Forum and also sits on the steering committee for the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference – WRFFC / Cynhadledd Gwir Fwyd a Ffermio Cymru – CGFFfC and Food Manifesto Wales.