Groundswell – the annual ‘Regenerative Agriculture Show and Conference’ has become a hugely popular meeting point for farmers, researchers and others on a regenerative, agroecological or organic (or all 3) journey. Despite great weather the numbers were good! We highlight some of the sessions that ORC were involved in.
In a first for Groundswell, we joined forces with the Woodland Trust, the Soil Association and the Forestry Commission to present the Agroforestry Tent, offering a range of talks and one to one advice opportunities for those interested in incorporating agroforestry into their land management. Clinic sessions provided attendees with free, personalised advice from a team of specialists including Christian Gossel and Lindsay Whistance from ORC.
Jenny Jackson is looking to achieve a whole farm system incorporating agroforestry into her smallholding in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, using grants available in the park. She booked a clinic session with Christian Gossel as she sees agroforestry as a tool to improve land management and not being from a farming background sought to learn from it and see things more clearly. The clinic session helped her to refine her plan with an emphasis on species selection, layout, and management pointers and a review of the current research available and what can be achieved. “It’s been great that you’re running these sessions, Christian Gossell at ORC was great at explaining the research on a one-to-one basis” she said. Jenny left with a plan from where they are starting from and what need to be implemented and changed to support her grant application. “Agroforestry is great but is a bit overwhelming and there is a lot of information out there it and we need to figure out what is relevant for us. Christian broke it down and explained how it would be practical for us and which specific research projects we should be looking at.”
Over the two days the clinic session attendees gained valuable insights from experienced professionals providing confidence to move forward with their agroforestry projects. ORC’s Philippa Hall said: “It was great to see the researchers interacting like this and research being applied in this way, bridging the gap between farmers and researchers”. If you’re interested in learning more about agroforestry or similar events, please look at our agroforestry research pages and resources.
See the poster here and find more on the project here
It felt appropriate to celebrate 30 years since Martin and Ann Wolfe established Wakelyns, their innovative and experimental agroforestry system, in a packed ‘Agroforestry tent’ at Groundswell. Their son David Wolfe talked through the various phases of Wakelyns, from planting trees into a bare arable field in 1994 through the years of research and innovation with ORC and others to the present day. But Wakelyns was always much more than just a research farm: “A lot of farmers came to visit, and a lot of first mover agroforestry farmers came from all over the country and the world, and then went and created their own versions of it (Wakelyns).”
Following the passing of Martin and Anne it has fallen to David and Amanda Wolfe to evolve Wakelyns through short food chains and enterprise stacking in order to make it work financially. “We don’t measure success by yield or profit. We measure success by a whole range of metrics. We want to have more people using better food, we want more well-being generated, more learning generated, more people living and working there, more visits, zero synthetic chemicals used, more biodiversity, more carbon sequestration there, and we want more fun there.” The next phase will be to find a way to democratise the ownership of Wakelyns and to get more people and organisations involved.
See more at: New updated version – Wakelyns Agroforestry: Resilience through diversity
A key figure in the last 30 years has been Josiah Meldrum of Hodmedod’s who talked about how Wakelyns has been a beacon of inspiration and innovation. Not just agroforestry but – the first commercial UK crop of lentils was grown there. Wakelyns is such a great example: “you can really see what change looks like.”
“I think we need to return to first principles and think about what a whole new system looks like, and how we re-embed ourselves within an ecosystem and change our relationship with the world around us.”
“Today is a really good opportunity to reflect on how much really has changed, both in the policy framework that supports agroforestry, farmer attitudes towards agroforestry and the public knowledge of agroforestry, but also in what’s actually happened to Wakelyns itself.”
He explained how significant and important he feels that Wakelyns is:
“Wakelyns has this fantastic resource, which is a 30 year demonstration of a series of agroforestry scenarios next to each other that doesn’t really exist anywhere else. And it’s so incredibly important that that continues, and that we continue to build these relational supply chains, and that we continue to think about how we can get diversity back onto our farm, both the people, but also the crops and the unintended species, the wild species that live around those things.”
Amanda Wolfe thanked Josiah (‘Mr Relationship’) and also the ORC: ” I just wanted to say thank you to the ORC who have, as David has said, collaborated with Martin and Anne for many years, and it was a joy and a privilege to be able to rekindle that relationship, because that’s meant so much in terms of how we’ve been able to develop the Story, to invite you to come to research things and also develop those very special relationships that both David and Josiah have talked about.”
We celebrated synergistic abundance with biscuits and cake made by Wakelyns bakery from local ingredients and Will Simonson presented David and Amanda with a small gift. Glasses were charged and a small toast was raised to the next 30 years of Wakelyns.
For more videos see: Groundswell YouTube 2024 playlist
