National Organic Conference 4 July 2023

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OF&G's National Organic Conference is an annual event built to service the stakeholder community in and around the organic sector.

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This one-day event is always held on a successful organic farm business with the aim of discussing the practical challenges and opportunities faced by UK organic farmers specifically and also the wider UK organic sector.

The event is open to all farmers who have an interest in exploring regenerative and organic techniques.

Since 2008 the OF&G annual on-farm conference has brought together people from across the food and farming community and from all over the British Isles, Europe and beyond.

The conference originally named, National Organic Cereals, helped to highlight the opportunities that could be gained from farming cereals and pulses organically.

We are finding however that the conference is increasingly finding relevance with organic livestock farmers and the wider supply chain.

Farming faces some significant challenges and everybody is looking to build strength and resilience into their businesses.

We believe that organic farming offers possibly the greatest set of opportunities for growers in the UK and consequently we want to provide an opportunity for the whole sector to come together to discuss practical, real world issues in a on-farm environment.

To that end we have decided to rename our annual event, The National Organic Conference (NOC). The aim being to provide a platform for the organic community to come together to meet, to share, discuss and wherever possible celebrate, resilient, organic food and farming.

We hope you can join us.

This event is fully catered and all refreshments are included in the ticket price.
Tickets available now.

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Read about the people speaking on the day

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This year will be the event’s sixteenth anniversary and we are very pleased to announce that OF&G’s NOC will be held at Green Acres Farm in Shropshire.

Green Acres was first certified as an organic farm by OF&G in 1999.

The farm is home to the Lea family who were also our hosts in 2018. There have been some fairly big, and quite small, but important changes that Mark has made to the farm system and to his farm business in the intervening years.

We are delighted to be returning for Mark space to update you all on the Green Acres story.

Focusing on a whole system mixed farming approach we’ll show you round a successful sheep and arable farm that has a range of really exciting enterprises including agroforestry, living mulch and a diverse collection of different milling wheats from some of the oldest to some of the most modern varieties available.

Our host this year is an organic farmer who has held an organic certificate for more than twenty years. 
Mark Lea has developed a suite of innovative enterprises on his family farm in Shropshire.

These include a flock of New Zealand Romney sheep, oats for Organic Arable and oat miller, White’s, and  peas for Hodmedods who are a small but growing independent business founded in 2012 to source and supply beans and other products solely from British farms.

The team from Organic Arable will also be able to provide further insights into cropping research and market opportunities.

Mark has around two dozen different cereal varieties for visitors to look at. These include some of the oldest wheats recorded in Britain, but also some very recent varieties, and cereal populations mixing the old and the new.

OF&G’s NOC23 will highlight innovative farming techniques, alongside the delivery of the multiple public goods that organic brings alongside the entrepreneurial approach Mark is taking.

Mark Lea said, 'Connecting with the people who eat and process our food makes us feel like food producers rather than commodity producers and is much more rewarding!'

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The National Organic Conference is fully catered, with a light breakfast, a two-course lunch and an afternoon tea all served as part of the ticket price.

We are really pleased to that this year we have one of the country's top restaurants as our service provider.

CSONS is an award winning family-owned business operating two globally inspired cafe restaurants in Shropshire dedicated to using the best locally sourced produce.

Some of the menu for NOC23 will have come from our host farm, and all of us in the OF&G offices are very much looking forward to tucking in.

The Organic Research Centre will present the very latest organic crop science
and the Organic Trade Board will be on hand to give details on the latest market data.

NOC23 will look at the whole of the farming experience from seed to shelf. To help us focus on soils we are very pleased to announce that we have one of the most experienced and highly regarded soil educators in practice today.

Joel Williams is also a friend of our conference speaking to NOC audiences previously. Joel will be coming from his home in Canada where he runs the independent consultancy, Integrated Soils and describes himself as a “Soil health educator, rethinking soils through a lens of biology”.

It’s great to welcome back Dr Julia Cooper who has recently joined as Principal Researcher at the Organic Research Centre. Julia will be talking about a topic very close to the hearts of all organic growers, weed control as part of a biological approach to food production. Julia is working also with the Oper8 project in conjunction with ADAS.

A recent tree planting project has been successfully completed at Green Acres Farm and the Woodland Trust will be on site to talk about the support they can offer to farmers thinking of planting trees on their own farms.

We also have the opportunity on 3 July to visit the nearby Harper Adams University to have a guided tour of the crop variety plots including naked barley and intercropping trials for CROPDIVA and a demonstration of field strip intercropping using the Hands Free Hectare autonomous vehicle.

OF&G Certification Officers will be on the farm all day which gives you, our licensees, the opportunity to have a chat, which for some of you, and some of the team here at OF&G will mean being able to meet in person for the first time.

So, you may wish to mark the date in your diary, 4 July 2023, OF&G’s National Organic Conference, Shropshire.

If you are interested in sponsorship or becoming an event partner please contact Steven Jacobs: steven@ofgorganic.org

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Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/national-organic-conference-2023-tickets-630119954747

LINE-UP ANNOUNCED

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The National Organic Conference is supported by:

the Woodland Trust - the RSPB - Organic Arable - OF&G
CSONS - OASIS - the NSA  - the Organic Research Centre
the Organic Trade Board - the Open Food Network - Agricology - the NFU