Making a living from not a lot of land - or new ideas for conventional farmers

Michael Wale discovers Oxford's Real Farming Conference in the field at Organic Lea

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It could now be argued 15 years after it was started that Oxford's Real Farming Conference, as it now reaches out with events around the nation, has had an incredibly significant effect on British farming.

In 2009, the agricultural writer Graham Harvey invited Colin Tudge and Ruth West (founders of the Campaign for Real Farming) to help establish a new kind of farming conference. It was to bring together practising, mud-on-the-boots farmers and growers with scientists and economists, and activists and lawyers, and everyone else with a serious interest in food and agriculture. The idea was and is to ask the really big questions - like what kind of farming do we really need and why; but also to focus at least equally on the minutiae of practice - and to see who, right now, in the UK and the world at large, is truly farming in ways that the world really needs, and that others can emulate.

So, in January 2010, the Oxford Real Farming Conference was launched as an alternative to the Oxford Farming Conference, which happens at the same time in January. Many farmers and growers visit events from both conferences and there is an overwhelming exchange of information.

AWAY FROM OXFORD.

Appropriately one of these this year was staged with Organic Lea, who were launched in 2001, making Lea an equal pioneer in its world. The purpose of the shared event was to underline how little land you need to make a living, and what could be gained by experiencing how each other work. The Lea are based in Essex on a site at the edge of London, and have nine full time growers. It is a worker's cooperative that operates by growing and distributing organic food locally as well as plants, They offer a box scheme where customers can choose the contents for weekly or fortnightly delivery.