A team of Eunomians had a brilliant couple of days at Groundswell – the regenerative agriculture festival. Isabelle Williamson, Yvonne Rees, Rebecca Mason, and Tom Raven attended the 8th annual Groundswell event.
Here is what Rebecca had to say about it.
Lovely to meet so many people in person, to listen and learn (particularly from farmers), and to have numerous thought provoking discussions about why we need a regenerative agriculture transition and how we actually do that…(!!). Some key take homes from me:
(1) Food system – resilience is key. This is particularly relevant to some of our current projects modelling Net Zero pathways for the UK agriculture and land use sectors – it is important that these pathways consider system resilience not just emissions.
(2) Regenerative agriculture principles will be fundamental in providing this resilience and events like Groundswell demonstrate the momentum building behind this approach. Transformation requires community.
(3) BUT at a global level we also need to halt the expansion of agricultural land and ultimately shrink it to free up space for large scale natural ecosystems. Demand change, food waste reduction and novel proteins are likely to be key here. They are not the only solutions but they are another part of the puzzle.
Other highlights include the epic food, glasto-rivalling music (courtesy of Wildfarmed), and a joyous few days away from my desk in the sun!! (I did sit in a cowpat on the dung beetle safari, but I decided if you’re going to do that at any festival, this was probably the one to do it at)
