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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.

Developing permaculture farm enterprises

Hosted by the Permaculture Association

In this session Hannah Thorogood will share the story of her successful mixed farm enterprise – the Inkpot – as a case study of how permaculture design can transform land and create a vibrant business. We invite other farmers and growers to come and share their own experiences and together we will explore questions such as how a design approach can support the process of making a farm more diverse, and how to manage, market and sell the diverse farm products and services that come from polycultural farm systems.

Permaculture offers a pathway towards farms that are regenerative, biodiverse, soil enhancing, resilient and profitable. Through this session participants will learn how they can incorporate these approaches into their own enterprises, and how to connect with other farmers and growers that are also exploring and applying permaculture principles.

Open to all. Please do come along and share your story!

Speakers/hosts include:

Hannah Thorogood – Hannah is a successful one-woman farmer who is not only mob-grazing her cattle and sheep, but also her turkeys! She has been practising regenerative techniques for 10 years and permaculture techniques for nearly 20. Hannah is a permaculture farmer, designer and teacher. She has taken the farm from an 18 acre depleted, compacted, toxic arable field into the diverse, abundant 100+ acre farm it is today demonstrating permaculture, regenerative agriculture and producing nationally award winning food.

Andy Goldring – Andy is the CEO of the Permaculture Association and has been working over the last 20+ years to support the development of projects, local and national farming initiatives, demonstration sites and case studies that show how permaculture is being applied within farms, smallholdings and micro-enterprises.

Giving farmers and growers a fairer share of the price of produce by building short food supply chains

Hosted by the Open Food Network

You will hear from a some of the farmers, growers and food hub managers who are using the Open Food Network to make direct selling links between the people producing the food and the eaters and buyers.

We will then open the discussion for participants to explore how they can join this growing network and in the process not only make their production enterprises more viable but also help to build fairer, more resilient and more environmentally sound food systems.

Speakers/hosts include:

Nick Weir – Nick is a part time grower on a CSA project. He is a founder of Stroudco Food Hub. He now works closely with farmers and growers to support them to make best use of the Open Food Network to build effective local food systems that are financially, environmentally and socially effective.

Nick believes that if we are going to build better food systems then we need to build those systems with tools which are fundamentally different from the tools used to build the current, broken, mainstream food system. This means that we need open source tools like the Open Food Network which are in common ownership and are controlled by the community of farmers, growers and community food enterprises.

Abi Morden – Abi is a founder member of Propagate and a seasoned food activist. She has been working across community and local food projects for over 20 years, and is passionate about food sovereignty and resilience. An experienced grower, facilitator, practitioner and researcher – Abi’s inclusive and collaborative attitude encourages everyone to be involved in thinking about and creating sustainable food systems. Abi is co-founder of Glasgow Food Policy Partnership, and the Dumfries and Galloway Sustainable Food Partnership (after moving to D&G last year) and holds an MSc in Food Security.

Rachel Gambro – Rachel is based in Aberdeenshire and is one of the 25 Food Tourism Ambassadors, recently appointed by Scotland Food and Drink, tasked to inspire food tourism growth in the area. In addition, she is leading the Rural Food Tourism Places project in Shetland, commissioned by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which focuses on collaboration and diversification opportunities within the crofting industry.

Rachel also runs a local community group called the Mixing Bowl Aberdeen whose objective, prior to the pandemic, was to bring people together to share their passion for good food. This was done through talks, tastings, demonstrations and very popular cooking workshops where local residents were encouraged to share favourite recipes

In addition to the regular monthly events, the Mixing Bowl organised and ran the annual Deeside Local Food Festival which attracted over 3500 visitors, showcased over 70 Aberdeen City and Shire food and drink businesses and facilitated over £55K of local produce and street food sales.

During lockdown, as a Covid resilient solution to the festival, the Deeside Food Hub was born and continues to offer a fortnightly local produce market featuring over 150 products from more than 20 producers using the Open Food Network platform.

The role of local wool and textile production in regenerative farming

Hosted by Rebecca Whittle

This event will bring you a panel of inspirational women; all of whom work with British wool or other fibres. Kate Makin (owner & founder of Northern Yarn), Maria Benjamin (Dodgson Wood farm), Zoe Fletcher (the Woolist), Andrea Meanwell (Low Borrowbridge Farm, author & Guardian columnist) and Rachel Atkinson (Daughter of a Shepherd) will join us to discuss how the wool industry has changed and how localised textile production can form an important part of regenerative farming landscapes, particularly in upland regions.

Speakers/hosts include:

Rebecca Whittle – Rebecca is a passionate advocate of local and sustainable food, farming and textiles. She is senior lecturer at Lancaster Environment Centre, community food skills chair for North Lancashire FoodFutures and a member of the Lancaster Textile Care Collective

Kate Makin – Kate is the owner and founder of Northern Yarn, an independent yarn shop in Lancaster which sources a wide variety of local and sustainable yarns including her own range which has been developed in collaboration with local farmers.

Maria Benjamin – Maria is the co-founder of Dodgson Wood, a farm diversification business based at Nibthwaite Grange Farm near Ulverston. Maria gives talks about building a business from scratch, particularly to the agricultural sector. She recently co-founded The Flock, which aims to provide British yarn from regenerative farms to fashion brands.

Zoe Fletcher: Passionate about British fleece and wool, Zoe’s work revolves around building honest, sustainable relationships with designers and producers, bridging the gap between raw materials, production and the end consumer. Pushing the boundaries using British wool and new technologies, exploring breed specific characteristics and celebrating their variety and versatility. Founder of the Woolist and co-founder of The Flock.

Cinderwood Market Garden: A review of year one

Hosted by Cinderwood Market Garden

Cinderwood is a one acre market garden in Cheshire built upon a relationship between a grower and a chef who believe in farming food for flavour. Produce is grown all year round in polytunnels and in the field using regenerative farming methods and supplies over fifteen restaurants, bakeries and delis in the Manchester area with produce harvested less than 24hrs before delivery. The panel session will re-live the successes and challenges faced within the first year of operation and sharing our learning with those who attend.

cinderwoodmarketgarden.co

@cinderwoodmarketgarden

Speakers/hosts include:

Michael Fitzsimmons – Michael is a Liverpool-born market gardener who trained at The Organic Farm Shop in the Cotswolds. Since completing his growing apprenticeship in 2017 he has interned at Relæ’s Farm of Ideas in Copenhagen and worked as the Assistant Grower at two-Michelin starred restaurant Moor Hall in Lancashire. He is passionate about growing with care for the land and closing the gap between farm and table. Michael started Cinderwood Market Garden in October 2020.

Joseph Otway – Joseph is a chef based in Manchester who operates Higher Ground, Flawd Wine and Cinderwood Market Garden. He has previously cooked at agriculturally focused restaurants Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Relæ and Where The Light Gets In in Stockport.

Daniel Craig Martin – Daniel is the co-owner of Higher Ground and Flawd Wine in Manchester and Cinderwood Market Garden in Cheshire. He has previously worked at Noma in Copenhagen and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York.

Richard Cossins – Richard is the co-owner of Higher Ground and Flawd Wine in Manchester and Cinderwood Market Garden in Cheshire. He has previously worked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York and for Simon Rogan in the UK.

Local policy and sustainable farming: Sticking points or a genuine impasse?

Clearly, efforts to generalise sustainable farming practices face some pretty considerable barriers: unforgiving market conditions, unhelpful subsidies, uncooperative banks, unrelentingly inflated land values, and so on. What role can local authorities play in addressing these issues and supporting a transition to a more regenerative farming landscape? From county farms to public procurement, development banks to planning reform, over the years various measures have been proposed to support sustainable farming, and in many areas local councils are currently experimenting with their implementation.

This session will draw on case studies from across the North (and beyond) to assess their performance, and reflect on the opportunities and challenges for local policy approaches. The panelists will outline how local agricultural policies have been put into practice, what impact they’ve had on the sector, and what lessons have been learned for our big-picture strategies for food systems transitions. Through discussion we’ll attempt to confront some of the most challenging questions: where do these policies hit limits, and to what extent can they be overcome? If policy has its limits, what other options do we have?

Speakers/hosts include:

Callum Sunderland – Callum is a graduate student at the Centre for Alternative Technology. He recently completed dissertation research on the impact of Preston City Council’s local economic strategy on Lancashire’s agricultural sector. He grew up in Hull and currently lives in London.

Rebecca Laughton – Rebecca has many years of experience in organic market gardening, farming and research relating to small scale agriculture and low impact planning, and is author of “Surviving and Thriving on the Land” (Green Books 2008) . She currently works part time at a glasshouse in Somerset, growing salad crops, while focussing on advocacy and research in the Landworkers’ Alliance Horticulture Campaign.

Ruth Westcott – Ruth co-ordinates Sustain’s work on the Climate and Nature Emergency and on Sustainable Fishing, working to make food a central part of policies to tackle the climate and nature emergency at a local and national level; also to encourage businesses to adopt a fully sustainable fish policy, and thereby help transform the way the world’s oceans are fished.

James Woodward – James joined Sustain in September 2020 and works on farming policy and campaigns. Previously, he has worked in farm advice for Natural England, supporting farmers into sustainable whole farm systems. He has also worked in farming policy for Defra and the National Farmers’ Union. Alongside this, he also likes to spend time on his step-family’s Cumbrian farm.

In it together – positive ways of farming with nature under leasing and business agreements in Scotland

Hosted by the Nature Friendly Farming Network

The tenanted sector currently makes up 25% of Scottish farmland and currently many smaller-scale urban and rural growers work under a lease or business agreement across Scotland. We know that transitioning to regenerative nature friendly practices requires a commitment to long-term land-use change and that in turn, requires those who own the land to work in collaboration with those who manage the land. NFFN will be joined in this session by three successful landowner/ manager collaborations from across Fife, demonstrating what this is achieving for their individual businesses, their communities and ultimately, the climate and nature. James MacKessack- Leitch from the Scottish land Commission will also outline current opportunities supporting more of these types of partnerships and joint ventures across Scotland.

Speakers/hosts include:

Kirsty Tait – Kirsty is the Sustainable Farming Lead- Scotland for the Nature Friendly Farming Network. With a background in tenant farming, land reform and rural & urban community development, she specialises in practice and project delivery and bottom-up policy development & influence.

Claire Pollock – Claire is from Ardross Farm which is family run. Ardross Farm sits across 1,300 acres on two estates in the East Neuk, is farmed regeneratively and produces wheat, barley, oilseed rape and beans, as well as raising PFLA certified grass-fed breeding cows and sheep and free-range poultry. There are more than 40 different kinds of vegetables grown here, and these along with the award-winning beef, lamb, mutton and chicken and now honey are all produced exclusively for their award winning farm shop.

Bryde Marshall – Bryde is from Falkland Kitchen Farm. Falkland Kitchen Farmbegan in 2014 when a young couple, Bryde and Nat, moved onto a small field on the Falkland Estate with nothing more than a polytunnel, a couple of spades and a big vision. They aimed to explore ways of growing and cooking exceptional food that would connect them to the natural environment and food heritage.  Driven by a deep passion to create a vibrant food system, they are now a thriving young farm delivering our veg across Fife, Perth, and Dundee and cooking their amazing seed to plate menus at events across Scotland. 

James MacKessack-Leitch – James comes from an arable family farming background in Moray and has a range of experience in the private and public sectors as well as with voluntary organisations, not least as a former director and vice-chair of the Forres Area Community Trust. As a Policy and Practice Lead, James contributes to the Scottish Land Commission’s work on land governance, land and human rights, land access for agriculture, and Common Good land and assets.

Safeguarding our food and our farms – why new GMOs are a real and present danger

Hosted by GM Freeze

Most agroecologists understand that genetic engineering has no place in a responsible, fair and sustainable food system but the PR campaign promoting new gene editing techniques is clever, well-resourced and gaining ground. The UK Government is accelerating plans to remove vital regulatory safeguards and, with them, our ability to say no. Post-Brexit market rules mean that even Scotland’s strong policy rejection of all GMOs will be under threat if we don’t stop the headlong rush towards a high-tech quick-fix takeover of our food and our farms.

Join an expert panel to learn about the latest scientific and political developments as well as the most effective ways to make your voice heard. There will also be plenty of time for questions on any aspect of GM in food and farming.

Speakers/hosts include:

 Liz O’Neill – Liz is the Director of GM Freeze, the UK umbrella campaign on GM food, crops and patents. GM Freeze is working to help create a responsible, fair and sustainable food system.

Steven Jacobs – Steven is the Business Development Manager of Organic Farmers & Growers which certifies more than half of UK organic land and provides support, information and licensing to Britain’s top organic food businesses.

Pete Richie – Pete is the Executive Director of Nourish Scotland, a charity focusing on food policy and practice. He also runs Whitmuir Organics with his partner.

Natural flood management walk

Hosted by the Lune Rivers Trust and FoodFutures

This natural flood management walk will show a range of techniques that can be used to slow the flow. On Backsbottom farm we have set up a trail showing restoring blanket bog, contour swales, check dams, in river training, attenuation ponds, contour grassland aeration and the use of liquid biofertilizer to encourage good soil structure. This will be a good opportunity to discuss flood management.

THIS WALK WILL NEED TO BE BOOKED SEPARATELY TO RESERVE A SPACE. FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE CIRCULATED TO REGISTERED PARTICIPANTS.

Speakers/hosts include:

Rod Everett – Rod has lived next to the river Roeburn for over 60 years observing it through the extreme flood in 1967 when the farmhouse was washed away along with other houses in Wray village. He is working with the Lune Rivers Trust on projects with local farmers and flood management in Lancaster in more urban settings.

Building a vibrant workforce in our landscapes

Hosted by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission

A land and nature skills service for Cumbria: What’s already happening, what’s possible and where are the gaps? We will be focusing on mapping initiatives in Cumbria and Northern England.

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, 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.

We would like to map the current/developing initiatives and discuss what the opportunities, challenges and gaps are in the proposed Land and Nature Skills Service. This will help to widen the scoping process and what we need to consider for delivery.

Through this session we hope there will be shared insight and connections into what opportunities are available, contributions of what people know is already happening and identifying the key gaps we need to fill. Some questions we might ask for input on include:
– Are there agroecological skills initiatives you know about or are part of?
– Are there some peer to peer learning networks, more formal training delivery or apprenticeships, amongst many other mechanisms of sharing knowledge, that we should all know about?
– Are there projects you’re aware of which need more people working on the land?

This co-creation session links to our in-person session at the NRFC gathering in Lancaster (2/3 December), where we will continue to build on the mapping and identify the gaps/challenges/opportunities which are emerging from our work together. The outputs will be made available to attendees and will feed into a wider scoping and delivery process, which we hope will enable more good work to happen across the sector.

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.

Julia Aglionby – Julia chairs the FFCC Cumbria Inquiry as Professor in Practice at the University of Cumbria. Other ‘hats’ include; Executive Director of the Foundation for Common Land, Chair of the Uplands Alliance and she is a practicing Rural Chartered Surveyor and Agricultural Valuer. Julia was a Board Member of Natural England from 2014 – 2019. She worked from 1993-2001 as an environmental economist on National Park projects in Indonesia and the Philippines. Julia has a keen interest in land tenure and her PhD was entitled Governance of Common Land in National Parks: Plurality and Purpose.

Julia lives in the Eden Valley, Cumbria with her family at Susan’s Farm; an organic Care Farm of which she is a Trustee and where she enjoys working on the farm.

Sam Beaumont – Sam is from Wilder Gowbarrow. Gowbarrow Hall Farm is a family run farm on the south facing shores of Ullswater in the Lake District. The farm is under the management of Sam and Claire Beaumont, as the third generation. “We are passionate about maintaining the natural beauty of the landscape and enriching the wildlife that falls within it. We are caring for the environment and are conscious of how farming fits within the wider global issues that our planet is facing.”

Wilder Gowbarrow is part of our mission to improve the sustainability of our farm business as well as our environment. It is a joint project between Gowbarrow Hall Farm and Wilderculture C.I.C.

The aim of the project is to operate a hybrid of ‘rewilding’ and regenerative farming, restore nature and landscape function while also contributing significantly to sustainable nutrition security and farm profitability by producing high quality 100% grass fed meats. This is a first for the UK uplands and aims to demonstrate that we can produce a sustainable supply of nutrient rich healthy foods from land that is unsuitable for plant food production.

www.wilderculture.com/events/

gowbarrow.co.uk

Carol Moffat (also joined by Veronica Waller and Kate Gascoyne), The Farmer Network

About the Farmer Network: The Farmer Network Ltd 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.

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/).

David Harpley – David is the Conservation Manager at the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, where they have run many traineeships, apprenticeships and studentships.

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.