Falkland Estate is once again playing host to the regenerative farming gathering, Groundswell Outreach Falkland, following 2023’s successful inaugural gathering. It’s taking place this year on Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th July.

 

GO Falkland is an offshoot of the annual Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival which is held in Hertfordshire. The aim is to generate awareness, engagement and action in people and organisations across regenerative land use in Scotland. Led by farmers, foresters, smallholders, growers and anyone interested in food production, it’s about co-designing a healthier and fairer future in Scotland’s food and farming system, sharing knowledge and creating partnerships which generate progress. 

 

Ninian Stuart, Johnnie Balfour and Joanna Bowen are three of the people instrumental in bringing Groundswell to Fife and galvanising Scottish farmers to support this vital movement – here they outline why Groundswell Outreach Falkland is so important and what they hope people will take away from this year’s event. 

 

Why does Groundswell matter? Why bring it to Scotland?

 

Johnnie: I was delighted that Falkland Estate wanted to use its expertise in creating events to increase access to the information and the people involved in regenerative agriculture. By hosting it here in Fife, we’re bringing these important messages to a new audience who can join in the movement. It’s really beneficial to have this gathering separate to other agricultural events to really celebrate and discuss these issues in detail. 

 

Ninian: GO gatherings are about  the power of being in a field with people who are practising (learning by doing) regenerative agriculture. It’s a farmer to farmer event – more than a conference, more like a festival in a field, celebrating where we are and what our next steps, or leaps, might be.

 

Learning by doing is really important, and Groundswell is really practical and inclusive. Lots of people come into the field from different positions, and everyone is welcome; different skills, experiences, different parts of the system. The system needs to change by having everyone involved – land owners, land stewards, workers in agriculture – it’s wonderful to hosta gathering with all these different people.

 

Change happens when you find new ways to  align within and beyond our system. There are people who come along interested in forestry, horticulture, cooking food or procurement for schools – so you begin to get those conversations happening outside of farming circles too. It feels important because it means those of us on the ground are opening out and connecting with the wider system. It’s about systemic change, and bringing those changemakers together. And it’s a really positive event. In the face of everything that stands in the way of making a difference we’re finding a way to have an impact, at a local level but also on a regional and national scale too. 

 

Joanna: For me, it’s so important to increase Groundswell’s reach and to enable other places to participate. So if that is our purpose, to advocate for regenerative agriculture, then the more people who know about it the better – we need to spread our wings. We did last year’s GO Falkland as a trial to see how it might work elsewhere, and this year we’re loosening ties but still actively involved, and it’s helping us to learn how to partner with other people so that we can take the event to other locations too. 

 

What are some of the key messages you hope people will take away with them? 

 

Johnnie: It’s sort of a cliché, but I always say that livestock are the answer. Mob grazing is the key that unlocks a farming system mixing crops and animals and I hope that people will come away with an understanding of the concepts of grazing and rest, how that impacts the crops they’re growing and how that means they can increase the fertility of their soil. And I would like people to be able to appreciate that you don’t need a thousand hectares and 500 cattle – it’s perfectly possible to achieve incredible fertility building with five chickens in your back garden, just putting them in a metre squared pen, and moving it around. 

 

But the most important thing about Groundswell is that it’s about everyone lifting their head and seeing the whole picture, rather than working in silos.

 

Joanna: My hopes for this year are to have an event which runs well and smoothly, and which will scale up from last year’s event and take it a bit further. It needs to be effective in bringing as many different voices to be listened to and heard and to inspire – especially those who haven’t yet transitioned to regenerative practices.

 

The most important thing is it’s peer to peer learning, not driven by government or industry, it’s knowledge and learning passed from farmer to farmer – sharing the good news about what they’re doing. It automatically has a very positive feel – it’s full of hope and good news stories. 

 

The other element is community. For many farms it’s not easy to be interdisciplinary but regenerative agriculture encourages community onto the land as different people play their part in the system; it really strengthens the link between the land and the surrounding community.

 

Ninian: The core theme of this year’s gathering is ‘the soil is everything and everything is connected to it’. Soil is at the heart of agriculture but also of human systems; we are embodiments of the earth and connected to everything, we tend to forget that. To be truly regenerative is when we recognise the interconnectedness of the soil, of people, of all of us. 

 

When you get things working together at a local scale, it’s really exciting; farmers realise they can connect their hedgerows and woodlands and suddenly there’s a home for lots of different species and birds. When they make the shift and see the results, and the potential of being able to change things – that’s when change happens. 

 

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Ninian Stuart’s family owns and operates the 1590 acre Home Farm and hill-land at Falkland. With a strong focus on responsible stewardship of the land, he is one of the founders and steering team behind GO Falkland.

 

Johnnie Balfour farms next to Ninian in Fife; he’s Chair of Pasture for Life, on the steering group for the Nature Friendly Farming Network and is an agro-ecology ambassador for the Soil Association.

 

Joanna Bowen founded the Groundswell event based in Hertfordshire with her husband John Cherry. As well as completing training in systemic constellations she has worked as an actor, director and teacher and has initiated community theatre projects and festivals.

 

Visit the ticket page to secure your place at GO Falkland 2024!