The largest organic on-farm event in the UK is going digital

The UK’s biggest organic on-farm conference, OF&G National Organic Combinable Crops (NOCC) is going virtual with a series of interactive seminars and online farm tours led by experts in UK food and farming.

The event, “V-NOCC”, is free to join and open to all and will stream live on 9th June, 7th July and 14th July. The programme of webinars will include V-NOCC partners Agricology, the AHDB, NIAB and the Organic Research Centre (ORC) joining the sessions.

“This will not be exclusive to our licensees or organic producers. We’re keen to welcome farmers and industry delegates from across food networks to join our online events,” says Steven Jacobs, OF&G’s business development manager.

The online event scheduled for the original conference date, 7 July, will include Farming Today’s Charlotte Smith leading a conversation with OF&G organic farmer John Pawsey.

“John will be joined by no-till specialist, Clive Bailye, to talk about how they farm and where their approach is working and where it maybe doesn’t perform as well as they would like, Steven says. “Like all good business people, John and Clive have clearly defined strategies and they constantly observe how their farm activities impact the farm business, both from a financial and an environmental perspective. We want them to really get into the ups and downs of farming and to explore what lessons each might learn from the other.”

The wider series will include an extended debate around the economics and agronomics of farming. “We want to look at what the threats are and what the opportunities may be following COVID-19, with Brexit and the climate crisis still very much on everyone’s minds,” adds Steven.

On 14 July, Sue Pritchard, CEO of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and Vicki Hird from environment coalition Sustain, will join OF&G chief executive, Roger Kerr and the director of research at the ORC, Dr Bruce Pearce, to discuss system approaches to food production with the land sharing model.

The V-NOCC series will also feature John Pawsey, chair of the NFU Organic Forum, hosting a virtual organic farm walk.

“One of the things to come out of this pandemic is the range and accessibility of talks and conferences being put online. V-NOCC provides an excellent opportunity to show how organic, as a legally defined and certified whole system, offers resilience in terms of economics, agronomy and the environment,” says Steven.

For the V-NOCC agenda and to register for webinars, click here.