Farmerama

The tenth National Organic Combinable Crops (NOCC) event was alive with farmers, traders, researchers, millers, processors and bakers exchanging ideas of how to work together to support ecological farming methods and grow and make healthy food.

This is a special episode commissioned by Organic Farmers and Growers, one of the UK’s largest organic certification bodies, who organised NOCC. We hear discussions of new varieties: growing, milling and baking wheat populations and then organic and non-organic farmers experiment with relay cropping, compost teas and companion planting.

Find out a little more about the Sea Buckthorn grown by David Eagle which we featured in Episode 23.

This month we visit a project in Malawi started by local farmers to regenerate soils and bring food security back to local people. Then we are back in the garden of England talking to an Essex farmer about his experiments growing Sea Buckthorn and how he and his son are dealing with the ever encroaching sea chipping away at their farmland. We talk no-till and have the first of several reports from our visit to the Soil Hack gathering.

This month we weave in and out of a conversation we had with Dame Fiona Reynolds, former Director-General of the National Trust. As Fiona shares about beauty, land, rewilding and much more, we hear from Welsh upland sheep farmer Rees Roberts and spiritual ecologist & artist Nessie Reid with what they think about these issues and ideas.

Beauty may seem a little airy-fairy and disconnected from the realities of running a farming business. But please do hear us out to the end…this is about bringing power back to the people.

Fiona’s recent book The Fight for Beauty is a call to arms for all of us to pay more attention to matters of the earth and oceans. We caught up with Fiona and she told us how she sees farming fits into the future of a Britain built on beauty.

Shelley Spruit from Against the Grain Farm just outside Ottawa, talks to Abi Aspen from Future Farm Lab about the Blue Corn the grow in contrast with the more traditional GM grains favoured by their neighbours. Some additional content from our feature in the farm from episode 21

Spoils, written at Romshed Farm in Kent, Feb 2017 by Pasture for Life poet in residence Adam Horovitz and recorded at the Oxford Real Farming conference 2017

This month we hear about an amazing variety of Care Farming projects from around the world, we catch up with a La Via Campesina member from Berlin and we speak to a chef about the unusual dish he put together for the recent Dan Barber food-waste restaurant in London. We hear from a Canadian farm going against the grain and putting purple corn on the map and we have a special treat – some poetry written at this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference by Pasture for Life poet in residence – perfectly highlighting the culture in agri-culture.

This month we celebrate the dawn of Spring as we bring you stories from many different communities across the UK: Abraham Organics gives us the low-down on halal and the meat they supply to the Muslim community in London. We hear how the Open Food Network works and one farmer tells us how they are using OFN to expand their business whilst reducing waste from surplus crops. We have some clever tips from Chagfood market garden about growing great veg on the wild exposed moors (and more generally growing great veg in the face of unpredictable British weather). And Plotgate CSA growers tell us about the human-scale tools they are crafting to support people caring for the land.

This is a special field report for Farmerama, we dig into Urban Food Fortnight which descends on London from 9th - 25th of September. Urban Food Fortnight is London Food Link’s celebration of the fantastic amount of food being grown, made, cooked and saved in London and the amazing stories behind it. We teamed up with London Food Link to weave together tips, tricks and ideas from some of the people and projects involved: GrowUp Aquaponics farm, Dusty Knuckles Bakery, Plan Zheroes waste food savers and seasonal chef Oliver Rowe.

From time to time we get in a story that’s deserves a bit more attention to than we are able give in our regular monthly episode. And here one of those. A field report from Farmeramra reporter Camilla Williamson at Castello di Potentino, a small-scale sustainable vineyard in Italy.