“/ disruptor /: a person or thing that prevents something, especially a system, process, or event, from continuing as usual or as expected”. Some creative thoughts for 2025 : click those pics+ for links
AGM (active game management)
An invitation to address a land/wildlife manager‘s AGM gave an opportunity to explore the room with an online quiz in advance. It also enabled them to air unspoken aspirations within 50 responses (“we’ve never done this before”) which could help inform ‘honest broker’ [social] science research for better partnerships.
London centric
A trip to the bright lights can enable the harvesting of broad-church thinking across a range of value-laden environmental issues. Thoughts on nature advocacy, countryside access (less walking poles, more connection to land), traditional landownership all exposed tensions between ideology and pragmatism. Evidence of us finding better ways to creatively unpack stuff.
Riverscapes
Hosting a farming panel at an activist-heavy river summit aired topics beyond those many just want to talk about. Pollution is a big issue but so is water abstraction and imported water via fruit.
Irish thinking
What do you get when filling spaces full of tree planters, ecologists, foresters, farmers, and nature protagonists? Click the pics for clues.
Big tent/small barn ag
Groundswell and Carbon Calling are two farming conferences where big names, big kit, big ideas and innovative ‘pilot’ sessions seek to share information en masse. So many fresh ways ‘to do’ knowledge exchange without rolling out the top 15% quartile progressive operators in the field. (Apply for details)
Party fringe beavers
Read the house rules to a room; add moderated audience interactive microphones and explore unscripted views which help inform wider discussions alongside hearing the panellists’ points of view.
Field intel diversity
‘[Climate] resilient development benefits from drawing on diverse knowledge (high confidence)’ ref para c.6 of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment. This might explain a necessity to undertake ‘field intel’ trips to ground-truth what’s going on out there by getting out there to learn what people are really thinking, feeling and doing – not just what they are saying.
Fruit, cow, supermarket, tree
Land drains and wiggled ditches
Optimising land does not dogma employ. This can be hard to stomach (exhibit A: an interview with Prof Charles Godfray – a land use academic) when change is tough. And it’s really tough for a long-term, cash flow poor, asset rich multi contested narrative rural sector. It’s inevitable and often unjust.
For all the wins-wins we seek, reality involves trade-offs. These can be easier to navigate if honest upfront conversations are framed with humility with the aim of seeking to build trust; rather than coming from the position of being ‘on the right side of history’.
Disrupting space for dialogue
Creating space is required to help a diverse range of communities (including under/misrepresented rural ones) be part of this change. It’s not easy standing loudly united while continuing to having quiet conversations. But these conversations are required (in public or in pubs) to prevent standing still and missing opportunities in building resilience for the changes ahead.
Adaptive thinking
This blog is set for 2025 but is prone to being updated. Meanwhile do comment in any way or form or contact me to unpack/discuss any of the above (especially the cryptic stuff).
‘it is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it’
Joseph Joubert