“/ 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 enables the harvesting of broad-church thinking across a range of value-judgement laden environmental issues. Thoughts on nature advocacy, countryside access (less walking poles, more connection to land), traditional landownership all expose tensions between ideology and pragmatism, which in turn provide evidence to find better ways to creatively unpack and frame environmental and rural issues. The same applies to my visit to Oxford for both the Farming Conferences in January 2025.
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. Another summit set for this year (click the pic for details).
Irish thinking
What do you get when filling spaces full of tree planters, ecologists, foresters, farmers, and nature protagonists at an inclusive conference and summer school on the west coast of Ireland ?
See link above and click the pics for more outcomes.
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 [always] rolling out the top 15% quartile progressives 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.
It’s just another way to engage in environmental dialogue. Oh, and introduce two people who have never met but have stuff in common.
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 learning what people are really thinking, feeling and doing – not just what they are saying.
Fruit, cow, supermarket, tree
The amount of stuff I learn from people, face-to-face, when on site is still mind-blowing. See the agroforestry fruit trees below and note the impact of change in soil type from fen black to clay cap on the trees. The roots of the oat crop indicated the ability of soils to ‘healthily’ handle pesticides required to increase yield productivity.
Fen land areas exhausted by extractive veg growing with failing land drains are worth more to society as peat rewetting projects. Unspoken well-executed mixed tree species planting in upland areas and lowland ditch wiggling without impact on food production. I could go on….
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 never easy. And it’s really tough for a long-term, cash flow poor, asset rich multi contested narrative rural sector. And can often seem 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’. Even if embracing nuance comes with its downsides.
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 value-judgement-free conversations. But these conversations are required (in public or in pubs) – from break the status quo, build trust and create opportunities around 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
Back to Langholm moor, ever changing from moor to woodland
