Horticulture/grains - Northern Real Farming Conference

Citizen Grain: Engaging communities in a better flour and bread system

Hosted by Scotland the Bread

Scotland The Bread is a collaborative project to grow better grain and bake better bread with the common purposes of nourishment, sustainability and food sovereignty. As well as researching more nutrient dense varieties of grain, growing them organically and milling on farm into fine wholemeal flour, we lead a number of projects aiming to engage Scottish communities in a flour and bread system that is healthy, equitable, locally controlled and sustainable.

In this session we will share the practical approaches we are taking to ensure access to better flour, better bread and an understanding of the grain system for all. We will hear the voices of communities involved in our Soil to Slice and Flour to the People projects and a description of our inclusive ‘People’s Plant Breeding’ approach to seed selection. There will also be the opportunity to learn about research being undertaken into a progressive ‘people nourished per hectare’ standard which – although currently focusing on our grain production – could transform how we value all food we produce.

Scotland The Bread wants to work collaboratively with others involved in creating a better grain system. While demonstrating our approach to this task, we hope that this session will provide the opportunity to connect with others in North England and Scotland interested in joining us to inspire change.

Speakers/hosts include:

Tara Wight – PhD student in crop science, University of Edinburgh

In 2020 Tara carried out a professional internship placement with Nourish Scotland and Scotland The Bread exploring the potential for collaborative and participatory seed selection to improve crop development and community engagement in local grain systems.

Daisy Martinez – Food Systems Research Assistant, University of Edinburgh

Daisy is part of a team – also including Dr Lindsay Jaacks and Dr Alfy Gathorne-Hardy – from the University of Edinburgh working on a research collaboration with Scotland the Bread that aims to understand how Scottish grain growing, flour milling, and bread baking can provide good quality jobs for the people of Scotland and looking to develop a ‘people, jobs and species nourished per hectare’ model that has the potential to improve how we measure food environments.

Sam Parsons – Estate Manager, Balcaskie Estate

Sam manages the thirteen farms that form Balcaskie Estate in the East Neuk of Fife. In 2015, the estate decided to switch from a conventional to a more regenerative, organic farming system, with the aims of measuring quality over quantity and moving away from producing for commodity markets. Since 2018, the estate has been growing Scotland The Bread’s diverse grains, and now lends its name to the Balcaskie Landrace wheat milled on-farm and sold to professional and home bakers.

Philip Revell – Projects Coordinator, Sustaining Dunbar

A founder member of Sustaining Dunbar with vast experience in environmental and community projects, since 2019 Philip has been leading a team of ‘patchwork farmers’ growing grains in small garden plots across the district as part of Scotland The Bread’s Soil to Slice project. Through this project, the community hope to develop a locally adapted landrace which can be used to re-establish a local supply chain linking growers, millers and bakers in the area.

Lyndsay Cochrane – Project Coordinator, Scotland The Bread

(Facilitator) Lyndsay Cochrane coordinates Scotland The Bread’s community outreach projects, working to engage local people in the movement to create a better flour and bread system.

Why is seed sovereignty important?

Hosted by the Charlie Gray.

We heard from people involved in the Seed Sovereignty movement in the UK and explored why seed sovereignty is important, how Gaia’s seed sovereignty programme is supporting the movement and considered next steps.

There were short presentations/outlines to set the scene on the current state of politics, ethics, technical and legal situation for seed and why it is so important for our food systems and community resilience.

We heard from Sinead Fortune the Programme Manager for the Seed Sovereignty Programme, UK & Ireland, Pippa Chapman of thoseplantpeople, a small-holder, master horticulturist, organic gardener and grower and Charlie Gray, Northern Regional Coordinator for the Seed Sovereignty Programme and Maria Scholten the Highlands and Islands Scotland Coordinator.

Speakers/hosts:

Charlie Gray is the Coordinator for North England and has been working on food systems for more than 10 years in Yorkshire, supporting community growers and connecting with allotmenteers and farmers. She is based at Horton Community Farm Cooperative where she coordinates seed-saving and co-founded and works cooperatively with various food organisations locally as well as permaculture networks nationally. She is an ethnobotanist by training and interested in the power of seed sovereignty to transform food systems and build community resilience. As a Yorkshire plant-based eater particularly loves all manner of leafy vegetables and broccoli (fortunately)!

Sinéad Fortune supports the Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty programme, UK & Ireland at a national and international level. This includes engaging with advisors on legislation, coordinating the overall framework of the programme, creating opportunities for engagement and education, and developing partnerships with key organisations. With a background in food security, community empowerment and social enterprise, Sinéad’s previous work has been in community-based food production, sustainable food innovation and community funding.

Pippa Chapman has worked as Head Gardener of a large private estate, in public and private gardens, developed a huge range of skills and experience of many shapes, sizes and styles of garden. She has been researching good sustainable horticultural practice for many years now both during her Permaculture Design Course at the University of Bradford and the Diploma in applied Permaculture. At Fern Cottage she is developing mixed edible and flowering herbaceous borders. As well as propagating for their plant nursery, from which they sell plants to the public and for use in the gardens they create and manage, Pippa and her husband live with their children and grow their own food on their smallholding. This is on a north facing steep slope in West Yorkshire. They have been trialling and breeding different fruit and vegetable varieties, including trialling breeding blight-resistant potatoes, new squash varieties and experimenting with lots of regenerative techniques as well as saving seeds from their trials.

Richie Walsh, Regional Coordinator for Lowland Scotland joined the team in June 2020 as the Lowlands Scotland Seed Sovereignty Coordinator. He has an academic background in amenity horticulture, market gardening and plant conservation. He works professionally in the field of horticultural therapy and is a keen amateur botanist specialising in the heather family native to Europe. He has a passion for community food growing. Over the last decade, he has set up and run community gardens in Dublin, Amsterdam and Glasgow. When not digging in a garden or wandering and botanising in the countryside, Richie can be found brewing his own beer, mead and hedgerow wines.

You can read a blog post about the outcomes of the session here.

Developing supply chains for minor cereals in North East England

Hosted by researcher from Newcastle University and farmers, brewers and millers.

Researchers, farmers, brewers and millers in North-East England have been developing sustainable production systems for minor cereals, alternative grains and ancient wheat varieties. This panel provided a review of outcomes from experimental research at Newcastle University, commercial development of alternative crops from Coastal Grains Ltd, lessons from incorporating minor grains into brewing from Donzoko Brewing and specific experience in farming and milling organic cereals from Gilchesters Organics. Results from fields trials of organic wheats, spelt, rye, buckwheat and quinoa were presented and discussed in the context of the current supply chains for these crops from a North-East perspective. The session was particularly relevant to those interested in learning more about how to diversify cereal production systems, why these alternative crops and varieties are important environmentally and nutritionally and how the UK and regional supply chains for minor cereals are developing.

Speakers/hosts:

Amelia Magistrali is a post-doctoral researcher at Newcastle University who has spent the past five years assessing the potential of and developing supply chains for alternative grain production in North-East England. As a PhD researcher, Amelia studied spelt and rye variety performance with alternative fertilisers as part of the EU HealthyMinorCereals project (http://healthyminorcereals.eu/) and the DEFRA Sustainable Intensification Platform (http://www.siplatform.org.uk/). Amelia currently works with Coastal Grains Ltd (http://www.coastalgrainsltd.co.uk/), a grain co-operative in Northumberland, on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership to develop supply chains for novel grain production. Through the project, she works with farmers to trial commercial production of spelt, buckwheat and rye varieties, which has resulted in a well-established supply chain for regional spelt production and additional avenues for buckwheat and rye in the UK.

Andrew Wilkinson has been farming at Gilchesters in Northumberland since 1992, converting them to organic production in 2002 and establishing the organic cereal research programme for Newcastle University’s Nafferton Ecological Farming group in 2003 (NEFG). Alongside his own PhD research evaluating organic milling quality cereal production, long term cereal variety and soil fertility trials continue to be conducted at Gilchesters in conjunction with many international research partners to the present day http://orgprints.org/10417/ . With the construction of their own flour mill, Gilchesters Organics, established in 2003, https://gilchesters.com/ provides stoneground organic flour directly to artisan bakeries, chefs and home bakers throughout the UK. From his experiences in farming, milling and organic crop research, Andrew continues to promote sustainable, local production systems for UK producers through better cereal variety choice and short food chain networks.

Israel F. N. Domingos is a researcher with an MSc in soil science focusing on soil management and a PhD in agriculture focusing on production and quality of the pseudocereals buckwheat (F. esculentum Moench.) and quinoa (C. quinoa Willd.). He is currently working on improving vegetables and maize production under sustainable low input farming system in Cuanza Sul (Angola). His long-term research interests involve the development of a comprehensive understanding of alternatives for improvement and diversification of genetic resources to increase productivity and quality of arable crops.

Reece Hugill is owner and head brewer at Donzoko Brewing Company (https://www.donzoko.org/home), who make unfiltered, continental inspired lagers and ales in the North-East.

A story of seed – an interactive northern Seed Sovereignty networking session

Hosted by the Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty Programme.

The session intended to connect northern seed sovereignty networks, to gain a better understanding of what’s happening in the region, including successes and what’s needed to develop greater seed sovereignty.

Now in Phase 2, the Seed Sovereignty Programme UK & Ireland from the Gaia Foundation, has appointed a dedicated coordinator for the northern region. The coordinator’s role is to support and build seed sovereignty networks in the north, supporting farmers and growers to develop seed sovereignty through training, the sharing of skills and resources and coordinated activities. These will be geared towards supporting an increase in commercially available open-pollinated seed and seed saving in the region as part of agro-ecological systems for greater food sovereignty.

Participants were invited to bring some (actual) seeds of significance to them, share the story of those seeds, what’s going well and what needs to happen next, so that they and others across the region might enjoy seed sovereignty.

Speakers/hosts:

Dr Dennis Touliatos, Researcher Centre for Agroecology , Water and Resilience is the Coordinator of the ‘Lancaster Seed Library’, a community seed saving project which focuses on collecting, saving and distributing locally adapted seeds, and re-skilling local growers in seed saving.

Maria Scholten, Regional Coordinator for Highland and Islands Scotlan, is supporting growers and crofters across Scotland. She has been working in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland collaborating and advising on seed issues and policy with the Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) for many years.

You can read a blog post about the outcomes of the session here.