Localised food systems discussed at the Oxford Real Farming Conference

The UK Food Group organised a successful session on “Localised food systems: ensuring UK policies strengthen healthy food provision and food sovereignty here and abroad” at this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference.

Over 2 days the conference was attended by more than 950 farmers, growers, academics, scientists, economists and activists.  Our session was chaired Nora McKeon –writer, academic and activist based in Rome.  Formerly in charge of opening up FAO to small-scale producers and civil society Nora continues to follow up global food governance.  She was joined by Tom Wakeford (Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience –CAWR- at Coventry University and UKFG Management Committee member) and Deirdre Woods, community urban grower and member of the GLA London Food Board.

At the conference we also held meetings with Nora McKeon on our involvement with CONCORD and the Civil Society Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on Food Security (CFS) and with Alberta Guerra on UK civil society engagement with the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme.  Watch the space for more news on these.

UK Food Group members such as the Permaculture Association, Compassion in World Farming, Pesticides Action Network, Landworkers’ Alliance, Soil Association, CAWR, the Gaia Foundation, Global Justice Now and Friends of the Earth also organised well-attended and relevant sessions during the conference.

There was ample media coverage to the conference including Channel 4 News, BBC Radio 4 Farming Today, The Guardian and The Times, among others.

The audio of the session is available here, the power-point can be found here and the video of the Food Sovereignty Alliance in India shared in the session is available at this link

More pictures of the conference are available at Flickr and Facebook page.  All audios and PPTs at www.orfc.org

Photo credit Hugh Warwick