en route to ORFC

kezia

08 Jan 2026 — 1 min read

Hello digital world and happy new year!

In the wet and cold of winter, it is invigorating to be heading to the Oxford Real Farming Conference for the next two days.

Anyone got any tips or want to meet up? Get in touch!

Here are some sessions I’ve got my eye on. Some clash, so final decisions yet to be made!

Thursday

Workshop – What can funders and the movement do together?
Co-creating resilience: nature, farmers and science
Workshop – Inner lands: cultivating foundations of wellbeing
Listening to the land stewards
Under surveillance: uncovering big ag's dirty tactics
Combatting hate in food and farming: practical actions for solidarity
Workshop – Listening on many levels
Workshop – What a story: Justice, narrative change and action
Workshop – Action against industrial livestock production

Friday

Farmer perspectives: pathways to healing and people and planet
Workshop – Words create worlds
Growing in relationship to the land: indigenous practices for resilient futures
The demise of plant-based foods: cause for celebration or concern?
Workshop – Flax fibre, dye demo and convivial conversation
Land sparing v land sharing: how organic can deliver
Unblocking power: the key to changing our diets?

Most of these relate in some way to my PhD project. Hotspot issues like (industrial) animal agriculture, land sparing v land sharing. Bridging different groups like farmers/scientists, town/country, funders/activists—and different worlds, like indigenous civilisations. Grappling with power structures. Deep listening, consciousness practices and other strategies that support (self+system) transformation. And I’m drawn to the mind-, heart- and body-full sessions as vital counterpoint to intellectual, heady talkshops.

And, it's always nice to be returning to Oxford, retreading old lifepaths from undergraduate days. At the same time, staying with friends, meeting colleagues old and new, and seeing a different life of the city as it hosts the Farming Conferences.

Hope to see some of you there!

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"stretch" collaboration

defining a network

Who's really collaborating?

convergence: listening (part 2)