Latest news

Once again the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) gave us a great start to the year, made even more exciting by the very first meeting of the Kindling farm's advisory group!

The conference, now in its fifth year, is a unique gathering of the UK’s agroecological farming movement. And the evening before the start of ORFC, some of the most respected people in the sector met to explore and challenge our vision for Kindling’s farm. As well as offering very positive and useful feedback, they started to look at how to help us communicate our vision for the farm to the outside world.

We’ve got a brand new crop of seven FarmStarters spread over our two FarmStart sites, who will soon be getting stuck into their first ever season of organic veg production on a commercial scale. Here’s some thoughts from the folk taking part:

We’re really pleased to share the news that two of our FarmStarters, Axel and Owen, are graduating to become fully fledged farmers with Glebelands City Growers.

Last weekend was the UK’s 2^nd Food Sovereignty gathering, bringing together over 200 people from across the UK: well established farmers and growers, new entrants to farming, buyers, NGOs/ campaign organisations, academics, activists (and loads more!).

Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

Well it's been a busy month and I feel quite giddy.

Whilst hundreds of thousands of people have had to turn to foodbanks in recent years, emergency food aid cannot be a long-term solution. Come and hear the findings of the Fabian Commission on Food and Poverty, and have your input into shaping the growing campaign to tackle food poverty and hunger in the UK…

Do you care passionately that no one in the UK should go hungry?

On Wednesday of this week pupils at a Stockport school had a fantastic time tasting fresh, local, organic salads. Priestnall School is the first secondary school in Greater Manchester to take part in an exciting pilot to adapt its menu to introduce more local, healthy, organic fresh veg into its menus.

Lots of interesting events happening in and around Manchester at the moment.

Ever been interested in organic farming but not sure if it’s for you? Now is your chance to find out at Kindling’s Do You Want to be a Grower event! On Monday 21^st September from 6:30 to 8:30 Kindling will be hosting an event along with local growers to give you a flavour of what being an organic grower involves, warts and all.

Growing Livelihoods – supporting new commercial growers across the UK

Kindling’s Director and co-founder Helen Woodcock recently went to Bristol to attend a Growing Livelihoods event that brought together projects from all over the UK and Ireland to discuss the challenges and solutions for supporting new entrants into commercial food growing. Read on for more from Helen.