The 14th ORFC conference took place in Oxford on 4, 5, 6 January 2023.
What started as a small workshop in a back room of a café fourteen years ago, protesting against the Oxford Farming Conference, has now become the largest global event about alternative agriculture.
1,800 in-person delegates and over 4,500 on-line delegates participated in over five hundred sessions, workshops and panel discussions in a hybrid format of on-line global participation and off-line work in central Oxford.
The topics of discussion ranged widely, covering economic, social and ecological aspects of alternative farming systems. The 350 in-person speakers represented all ages, ethnicities and cultures, with Iain Tolhurst representing Vegan Organic Network and Tolhurst Organic.
Vandana Shiva opened the conference with powerful messages to all delegates – farmers, growers, researchers, campaigners and all.
”Farming with farmers who care is the only way to farm”.
”We are not at the top of the pyramid. We are part of a circle, of the Web of Life; we are 10% humans and 90% biome”
”Human life is intertwined with Nature, and Earth should be our Teacher„.
Stockfree Organic and Vegan Organic Network in conference programme
We would like to thank Vegan Organic Network for their on-going support in the development and promotion of the stockfree organic standard at national farming events!
The conference programme included presentations from stockfree organic farmers Iain Tolhurst and Sparrow Middleton.
Iain Tolhurst (Tolly) presented practical methods of Peat-free plant propagation media.
The last decade has seen strides made in sales of peat-free growing media in amateur horticulture, although voluntary targets set by the government failed to mobilise the industry to phase out sales by 2020.
In commercial organic horticulture, a voluntary target has been set to end the use of peat in growing media by 2024, ahead of Defra’s 2028 target for professional horticulture. However, the challenge remains to find affordable alternatives with the physical and chemical properties of peat. Many commercial growers have found challenges with cost, availability, quality, consistency and suitability of peat-free alternatives, particularly in areas such as transplanting, propagation and mushroom casing. Furthermore, not all alternatives have glowing environmental or social credentials. This panel session from Tolly at Tolhurst Organic on recent successes and innovations in using stockfree organic compost based on woodchip.
Tolly also participated in a panel discussion with hundreds of participants attending “Feeding Britain from ground-up: why we should align our future diets with regenerative farming systems”
Building on the Sustainable Food Trust’s ‘Feeding Britain from the Ground Up’ report in June 2022, which indicated a massive reduction in livestock numbers, this session explored the need to speed up the transition to more resilient and regenerative food and farming systems, and reduce public confusion about healthy and sustainable diets. Iain Tolhurst was in the minority on the panel, representing the stockfree farming sector, whereby regenerative farming is done without livestock, and his message was that the country needs a much more robust change in livestock and diets, than the report recommends, if we really want to build up chances for the future.
The panel discussion was live streamed and will be uploaded to ORFC YouTube channel.
Sparrow Middleton participated in a workshop about Biodynamics, bringing out the example of Tolhurst Organic, whereby farming close to natural systems does not involve any animal inputs, and can attain the same high standards of produce quality and care for Nature as in Biodynamics.
The Stockfree Organic stand displayed in the St Aldates Church was at the heart of the social activities with all the meals, music, networking and cultural workshops happening in the immediate vicinity.
Next to the Stockfree Organic stand was the information stand from the research hub of soil studies – Coventry University.
The Stockfree Organic stand displayed a box of stockfree organic produce from Tolhurst Organic, the new banner Go Stockfree Organic, leaflets, Grown Green International magazines of 2022 and Growing Green, Growing Sustainability books. All the magazines were picked up by stand visitors. The articles published in the magazine about Stockfree Organic standards were displayed and explained to those who wanted to learn more.
The ORFC conference is not strictly a farmers’ event, and this showed in the interests of stand visitors – most of them were from various NGOs, a lot of research/academia representatives, students and mass media.
We met with most growers who were at the conference and are aware of the stockfree organic principles, and we have established to follow up with invitations to join the stockfree organic standard.
Photos by Hugh Warwick, Tamara Schiopu, Sparrow Middleton, Iain Tolhurst