Farmers call for small-scale farming to help fix climate crisis
Farmers and activists will come together at the Oxford Farming Conference (ORFC) later this week (January 7) to highlight how small-scale farming can help to fix the climate and ecological emergency.
This call from farmers comes in the face of multiple global threats, the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, economic inequality and poverty, which continue to be caused and exacerbated by industrial farming.
At the conference, delegates including representatives of indigenous communities in the Amazon and the Arctic will push for food, farming and nature to be at the top of the COP26 agenda.
Farmers from around the world who practice climate-friendly methods, including regenerative and organic farming, will share their success stories over the course of the conference.
Farmers around the world who practice climate-friendly methods, including regenerative and organic farming, will share their success stories over the course of the seven-day global conference.
Colin Tudge, Oxford Real Farming Conference co-founder, said: ‘Agriculture in its present form is both a cause and a victim of all that is wrong with the world – from social injustice and political unrest to mass extinction and climate change. It is treated as a business, like any other, and required above all to compete for profit in the global market.
‘What we need is real farming – based on the principles of agroecology and food sovereignty. ORFC Global will bring together farmers, food producers, activists, policymakers, academics and many others from around the world who are already showing how things could and must, be very different.’
Elizabeth Mpofu, a small-scale organic farmer and co-founder of the African Women Collaborative for Healthy Food Systems added: ‘Small-scale agroecological farmers around the world, the majority of them women, are producing food and resources for their communities while reducing CO2 emissions from agriculture. It’s as simple as that. Agroecology is the way forward. It’s a climate-friendly farming system.’
Photo Credit – Pixabay