Oxford Real Farming Conference 2024

With 100+ sessions in Oxford and live-streamed around the world, the ORFC 2024 line-up of talks, discussions, and social gatherings is not to be missed. Join speakers from the UK and around the world to celebrate 15 years of bringing the real food and farming movement together and address critical issues, including:

• Farming through economic & ecological crises

• Resisting the financialisation of nature

• Land justice & the commons

• Soil health & strategies for climate resilience

• Farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange

• Youth activism & ancestral practices

• Mental wellbeing & land-based wisdom

• Agroecology as a revolutionary practice

From a fringe protest of 50 people to a global gathering of 5000 in 2023, ORFC brings the grassroots movement together to lead the way towards a fairer food and farming system in the UK and beyond.

Incredible sessions include:

• farming with funghi 

• stories from the field 

• diasporic growing (Hong Kong) 

• première of Six Inches of Soil 

• the commons and land justice 

• soil health and carbon sinking 

• young people return to the land 

• mob grazing 

• food and farming hustings 

• saving our rivers 

• natural weaning 

• how to farm off-grid 

• the black oat revival 

• food sovereignty perspectives from the UK and Europe 

• farming through extreme weather

• micropropagation 

• natural burials 

• fibre farming 

• democratising food systems 

• crofting and heritage practices 

• bail grazing 

• seeding reparations 

• intergenerational knowledge exchange 

• queer ecologies 

• farming with nature spirits 

• rare-breed sheep and cattle 

• open sourcing agriculture 

• land-based traditions 

• heritage grains and much more!

Book now: https://orfc.org.uk/book-orfc-2024-tickets/

We will also be at the ORFC: 

Realising the potential of public procurement for supporting local, agroecological farmers

Venue: Digital Hub, Cheng Building - Jesus College (Market Street)

Time: Friday 5th January, 14:00 - 15:30

Chair: Sofia Parente (Sustain)

Speakers: Pearl Costello (Food Sense Wales), Gavin Fletcher (Good Food Leicestershire), Jono Hughes (Horticulturist), Raksha Mistry (Food for Life Leicestershire), Kelly Parsons (University of Cambridge)

This session will highlight the huge potential hidden in public procurement for delivering healthy and sustainable food to communities, creating routes to market for agroecological farmers as well as the role of food partnerships in joining the dots between procurement and other local agendas. The session will kick off with an outline of the opportunities as well as common barriers in sourcing more local and sustainable food in public procurement. It will be followed by case studies illustrating the importance of local infrastructure, building relationships between the public sector and farmers, and the role of programmes such as Food for Life in transforming food culture. Delegates will have the opportunity to respond to the panellists and ask questions from the floor.