The industrial food producing system is broken. It is damaging our soil, our ecosystems and ourselves. We need to find ways to address the multiple challenges facing our industry; solutions that are transferable, scalable and sustainable. We need to do this quickly, sincerely and meaningfully. We can only achieve transformation of our industry if we work together to change it.
Traditionally the approach to addressing the complex challenges that face the food production industry has been one of compartmentalisation and intensification. Yet all are interlinked and solutions for one can often exacerbate others. These challenges are so vast and their interdependencies so complex, it can seem impossible to address them all effectively or efficiently within a single production system, and yet perhaps it is only by taking a whole-system based approach that we can begin to make headway. This integrated, ecological, regenerative approach is the basis behind the ethical farming proposition:
- Fair work for people
- High welfare for livestock
- Environmentally regenerative closed-loop production
- Sustainable circular economies
Ethically produced food is an important emerging market. Consumers want our industry to find solutions. The Ethical Farming Conference is an opportunity to bring together ethical and sustainable innovators, both practice-based and academic. The conference will support knowledge sharing across the industry and facilitate future collaboration, across supply chains and between researchers and food producers. It will showcase value creation through innovation and ethical consumer-facing propositions, and it will explore economically viable, scalable and replicable production methods that place high value on natural capital.