Category Archives: Challenges

Chris Packham and the Nature Friendly Farming Network

I recently visited Martin Lines, UK Chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. Martin invites large numbers of people to his farm each year to show them what he is doing to improve the state of nature on his farm. One of those guests was Chris Packham who organised a bioblitz to take place onContinue reading “Chris Packham and the Nature Friendly Farming Network”

Meet the Farmers – episode 28 – ‘Searching for Common Ground at the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference’

Every January well over a thousand people gather in Oxford to talk all things connected to food and farming, at the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference. For the first time I attended both conferences in an attempt to search for common ground and to see whether delegates would be interested inContinue reading “Meet the Farmers – episode 28 – ‘Searching for Common Ground at the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference’”

Searching for Common Ground at the ORFC and the OFC

I will be spending the next couple of days at the 10th Oxford Real Farming Conference and the 73rd Oxford Farming Conference and my mission is simple, but also overwhelmingly complex: to search for common ground between the two. How are these two conferences similar and how are they still fundamentally different? Is there aContinue reading “Searching for Common Ground at the ORFC and the OFC”

The Hare, why I love it and why we might lose it

Working on a mixed farm with a mosaic of arable cropping, tussocky grassland, marshland and hay meadows I am lucky to be able to see a wide variety of species, although I would love for wildlife abundance to be still greater, a difficult prospect when wildlife is under threat from so many angles. Hares haveContinue reading “The Hare, why I love it and why we might lose it”