The conference, which runs for the next two days, addresses the triple challenges of climate change, resource depletion and food security and the need to develop new models for food and farming systems for the 21st century.
Patrick Holden, Director, Soil Association will open the conference, speaking on the future of the food industry and is joined by many other key individuals from the agricultural sector, including: Monty Don, BBC presenter and Soil Association President; John Craven, a presenter on the BBC’s Countryfile; Roger Williams, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Food and Farming; and Peter Kendall of the National Farmers Union.
A number of panel discussion and workshop sessions will debate whether a modified ‘business as usual’ strategy is enough to tackle the food and farming requirements of the future or whether future plans will require the most far reaching changes our food systems have seen for more than half a century.
Debates will focus around four key sectors: political, farming, civil society and public, with questions asked around whether organic farming can play a central role in sequestering atmospheric carbon, organic is now seen as expensive and elitist - have we been complicit in this positioning and how it can be challenged, and how can the Global North and the South work together in developing truly sustainable food and farming systems.
Despite the urgency of the need for radical overhaul of our food and farming systems many key players in the agricultural industry believe that the solution will be based on existing production systems high inputs, GM and global trade.
As the organizers of the conference, the Soil Association believes that our current globalised, and deeply unsustainable industrial approach, requires a national action programme on the scale of a war effort.
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