How can the foodservice and hospitality sector help unlock the community benefits from regenerative agriculture?
This Footprint Forum, held in association with Nestlé Professional, seeks to analyse the subject of regenerative agriculture through a different lens – the increasingly important role of regenerative agriculture in the community.
For some practitioners, the regenerative philosophy is as much about being rooted in place as in the soil, with farms forming part of a mutually beneficial ecosystem along with local people, institutions and businesses that delivers economic, social and environmental value to a community.
This theory has yet to be rigorously tested by scientific research and the notion that farms can be the glue that binds a community together is challenged by some as rose-tinted in an age of globalised food supply chains and commodity crop production.
This Footprint Forum will explore the relationships that have developed between farms and their communities, the mutual benefits that can and have been unlocked when a farm adopts a regenerative mindset, and the challenges farmers and those that form part of their ecosystem face in unlocking these benefits.
We will examine too the role that businesses further down the supply chain have to play in helping unlock the benefits of community-based regenerative agriculture through their relationships with farmers and their procurement practices. And we look to highlight examples of where the commercial and community benefits of regenerative farming have successfully coalesced to create lasting social impact.
The overriding question of this Footprint Forum is what foodservice and hospitality can do to further the benefits of this approach. Confirmed speakers and panelists are as follows:
Tom Morphew, CEO, Full Cirkle Farms & The Garden Army
Patrick Barker, Owner, EJ Barker & Sons
Tom Barton, Co-Founder, Honest Burgers
James Evans, Co-Founder, Grassroots Farming
Emma Keller, Head of Sustainability, Nestlé UK & Ireland
Places limited. Register below to avoid disappointment.
