Emergent Generation had an outstanding presence at the Oxford Real Farming Conference 2025! We were grateful and humbled to be recognised as an official partner of the conference alongside such inspiring organisations. While it is impossible to sum up 200 sessions and a myriad of side events, we want to share a few highlights and learnings!
Reconnecting with old friends and making new ones was just as important as catching up on the latest of agroecology and regenerative thinking. Em Gen’rs took over the Kings Arms two nights in a row to celebrate the friendship and kindness underpinning this network.
Our workshop connecting agroecological youth movements, hosted at the Youth Strand of the conference, also reflected the diversity of ideas and organisations present in the food and farming space. We identified common needs of confidence, networking, and resources and we will continue working on mapping synergistic movements to amplify our power and build collaborative projects.
Jonty Brunyee, Emergent Generation Co-Founder and Director, said that he had a busy and invigorating Oxford Real Farming Conference. On Wednesday night, he was a guest at the ORFC/OFC conference welcome dinner at Somerville College, representing us and all that he does for agroecology and sustainable food systems. He was honoured to be seated at the High Table with Sue Pritchard (FFCC), James Rebanks (farmer and author), Tony Juniper (Natural England), and Ifor Huw Irranca-Davies (deputy first minister of Wales) amongst others. All knew about our work by the end of the night!
Jonty joined in the most excellent Food and Farming Futures Networking event that we organised in collaboration with Sustain, Roots to Work, and Soil Association on Thursday night meeting lots of young members, new faces who wanted to know more, and supportive fellow elders, before we gathered at the Kings Arms for more community building and a beer or two. These informal spaces are so important to give new entrants and young people the confidence to enter the sector with meaningful connections and knowledge. ORFC was yet again a unique moment of food system actors, growers, changemakers, and learners coming together, united in our passion to build a food and farming system safe, prosperous, and sustainable for future generations. We will do this one again!
On Thursday, Jonty was a speaker on a panel focusing on cultured meat and the opportunities and threats to farming. The climate emergency is upon us and we need game changers. Is cultured protein an answer? It’s always good to keep an open mind and to be involved in such discussions, but ultra-processing food in a lab doesn’t sit well with our mission. Jonty left the session more committed than ever before to regenerative agriculture, sustainable grazing, and British pulse production.
Becky, Jonty, Will, and Giacomo attended a session on the urban and rural divide with Anna Jones (Just Farmers). Anna is keen to help develop and run our next flagship event adding a focus on how we can break down silos and the urban-rural divide… watch this space!
Being a successful and happy agroecologist, whether you are a farmer, grower, adviser, facilitator, or leader, is knowledge-intensive. You also need a degree of confidence and connection. Jonty coordinated and helped deliver a session on day two of the conference exploring a range of accelerator programmes that aim to deliver intensive and impactful learning, mindset shift, and community building in the agroecological and regenerative farming space. How do these programmes compare? How can you engage? What lessons have been learned? What do potential participants need? Chaired by Russ Carrington, attendees heard about the Regenerative Agriculture Accelerator Programme in the Cotswolds led by Jonty, Roots to Regeneration from Clare Hill, and the Nicole Masters CREATE programme from Silas Hedley Lawrence. Becky Grove, fellow Director of Emergent Generation, presented on the work of Emergent Generation which was very well received. This session highlighted the importance of deep and supportive learning communities like ours, spurring us on for 2025.
Leonie Nimmo of GM Freeze, Tom Wakeford, and Giulia Kessous organised an interactive session sharing intergenerational knowledge of anti-GM activism back in the day and its relevance now. Walking through the timeline of regulatory progress and activist battles revealed the power of narrative and language. Precision breeding is neither breeding nor precise, just a political term to enable deregulation. When the Daily Mail picked up the term ‘Frankenfood’ for the first GM product in the UK in 1996 (tomato puree), it galvanised popular objection. The media tend to stand on the side where they think people are. Iceland was the first UK supermarket to denounce GM products out of principle, and Sainsbury’s followed suit for marketing motivations.
Activism has been relatively quiet since 2015 and the debate on new genomic techniques (NGTs) is open again. Resistance continues mostly in the Global South, with the notable addition of Belgium, and science struggles to serve a hardly defined public interest. The point of GM was to reduce the use of chemicals, but currently the opposite is happening. Its effects on marine life are disastrous. Breeding patents concentrate power in food systems–the microbiome must be protected from patenting. Biotech companies are developing life forms generated by artificial intelligence, a combination of two powerful and unpredictable technologies.
Em Gen’er Giulia Kessous took part in the Workers Cooperative session with Suma, Unicorn in Manchester, and Tyddyn Teg in North Wales. A worker cooperative is a new, inspiring way to do business. The members of the cooperatives are workers, who are in control of the governance. They have the same pay and fill multiple roles (from cleaning the toilets to strategic planning).
Benefits include control over livelihood, access to land as new entrants, and empowerment that leads to more commitment to the work. Stepping back from individualism towards a better sense of community develops solidarity, dignity, and safety between workers. While everyone is valued the same, the model also works commercially.
For effective cooperation, methods to deal with conflict and make decisions must be clear. Finding a balance between having everyone involved and efficiency is not always easy, especially in a crisis when urgent decisions are needed. Management is critical to preventing burnout. Overall, the bigger the coop, the less power individual workers hold. Such an inspiring session on how to make dreams a reality for a real sustainable food system et every step of the food chain!
Farmworker struggles in Britain raised voices from the frontline. Visa rules in the UK, especially for seasonal worker visas, set a legal and business framework that tends to increase the risks of exploitation. For example, workers are under the control of Scheme Operators, organisations dealing with paperwork and sending workers to farms. They experience terrible living and working conditions, often living in neglected caravans. Workers are attached to one farm, there is no transfer possible if things go wrong, and there is no change of Sheme Operators either due to unwritten agreements between them. Workers regularly experience verbal, physical, and emotional violence and discrimination. Debt and scarcity of work hours are used as leverage to pressure workers who fail to meet targets or are considered too defiant.
But there is hope. The Worker Support Center raises awarness on workers' rights, defends workers when they are ready, and provides different types of support in their own language. Julia Quecano’s case is an inspiring and brave story about how she organised a strike and sued the companies: you can check the #justiceisnotseasonal campaign and give some support in the aftermath of the protest in London on 24 January.
Some technical sessions for instance on integrated pest management, silvohorticulture, or cover cropping showcased practical experiences on the farm. Trees on a vegetable farm can serve as a windbreak, keep moisture, provide shade, expand the growing season with warmth, invigorate soil life, and maintain yields. While 80% of trees integrated in horticulture have lateral roots, it is possible to manage them with root pruning to encourage roots to grow deeper. Top pruning and competitive understory plants can also manage root growth. Planning, placing, and phasing agroforestry depends on the objectives and needs of the farmer: is it soil erosion, wind chills, direct sun, or a new product? Agroforestry is a tool to increase resilience.
And there were less technical sessions that considered the social, psychological landscape of farming. Neurodiversity and neurodivergence among land workers must be addressed as a workplace issue. Neurodiversity is a naturally evolved part of human biodiversity, highly conserved by natural selection–not a disadvantage. We need to accommodate it and make the most of it in an industrialized society. According to the social model of disability, it is a normal part of human diversity with a mix of impairments and benefits. Social structures create disability in certain environments. Disability is more a sociopolitical identity than a given diagnosis. Diversity is not separate from humanity and personality; in the words of Jim Aplin: “If I wasn’t autistic, I wouldn’t be me.” While neurodivergent land workers face numerous challenges–from marginalisation through self-confidence issues to bullying–they contribute benefits and talents to the sector, such as hyperfocus, problem-solving, creative thinking, loyalty, integrity, and a strong passion for changing systems–much needed for our food system.
Thank you so much to everybody who worked to make this inspiring and connective ORFC possible, to all Em Gen’ers and partners who were present and supported our involvement, to the fantastic conference team, and to the volunteers. It felt great to be a part of it and feel inspired. Infinite thank you.
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