with Dan Cordner, Nick Holliday, & Randal Breen

A deep dive for producers and aspiring growers to explore the how-to, challenges, and benefits of pastured poultry.

Through farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing, AFSA pastured poultry producers, Dan Cordner, Nick Holliday, and Randal Breen, delve into building agroecological poultry farming systems, including CSA and Reko Rings as solidarity-based market channels, farmer collaboration, heritage breeds, and working together to advocate for appropriate regulation for small-scale pasture-based producers.

with Peter Rosset

We talk to agroecology scholar and activist Peter Rosset about the need for farmer-led knowledge and the transition to agroecology. Peter is professor of agroecology at the ECOSUR Advanced Studies Institute (ww.ecosur.mx)in Chiapas, Mexico. He has worked with agroecology processes in La Via Campesina for many years, and recently co-authored “Agroecology: Science and Politics” with Miguel Altieri. His research focuses on scaling up peasant agroecology in grassroots social movements.

We chat with Peter about his experiences with fostering the agroecological movement internationally, and how to do it in Australia.

with AFSA

In many regions, local abattoirs are rapidly disappearing, and producers face growing distances and costs to send stock for processing, while confronting the problems of large-scale abattoirs dealing with high volumes of industrially-produced meat.

Small-scale producers, for whom animal welfare and supply chain independence is critical to how they farm, need better alternatives and are working to build them. The process remains complex, but the solutions are emerging in examples around Australia, from on-farm facilities to shared infrastructure for local farming communities.

This session provides a practical deep dive for small- to medium-scale livestock producers to learn, share, and develop solutions on how to create a food sovereign system for ethical meat production.

with Lock the Gate

Lock the Gate was formed in 2010 following community meetings in New South Wales and Queensland. All over the eastern states, people were raising concerns about the rapid expansion of coal and coal seam gas development. A declaration was made: farmers would lock their gates to these rapacious industries. Ten years on and the Alliance continues to gain momentum, with rural and urban communities all over Australia stepping up to defend our land, water, and future from the invasive coal and unconventional gas industries.

We chat with Lock the Gate about how they have connected 120,00 people in solidarity to create change, and why a sustainable future for land, water, and communities needs people standing together and acting collectively.