14 January 2026

Last week, Oxford hosted its annual tale of two conferences. The Oxford Farming Conference (OFC), now in its 90th year, welcomed the establishment, including Emma Reynolds MP delivering her first speech as Defra Secretary. Across town, the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) drew thousands from the grassroots agroecology movement for its 17th gathering. Angelina Sanderson Bellamy was there, and here are some of her reflections on what the conversations revealed.

The farmers outside the room

Farmers were protesting outside OFC on the first morning, as ministers and secretaries of state from across the devolved nations gathered inside. As Dominic Watters put it: “They just want to be heard. And this is where we are, the same.” Dame Fiona Reynolds, in her closing address, named the challenge directly: “There is a deep disconnect between people, food and farming… We don’t have a shared vision within the farming community.” Her warning was that without one, government will continue to divide the sector. Next year’s OFC theme is ‘Harmony’ in an explicit attempt to counteract polarisation.

A farmer’s quiet confession

Over lunch at OFC, a conversation with Emma, a family farmer, captured something important. She described herself as “very strange” for wanting to adopt regenerative practices and reduce her reliance on fertilisers and pesticides as if making a secret confession. She’s been taking classes, experimenting with her livestock, and wants to leave her land better than she found it. But she’s daunted by the prospect of learning about soils and unsure if she can convince her husband to make the change. Emma isn’t unusual, she represents the many farmers who sense the direction of travel but feel uncertain about how to get there. These impromptu conversations matter as much as the speeches and organised sessions.

“Things are good and getting better, but not fast enough”

Jack Bobo, who spoke at OFC, offered a reframe that stuck with many attendees. Current narratives on food and climate change aren’t working, he argued. Stories about huge problems don’t scare people into action, rather they create doom in some and outrage in others. “When I tell farmers ‘things are bad and getting worse’, that’s like telling them they’re the problem. But when I tell them ‘things are good and getting better but not fast enough’, they’ll say ‘I’ve got a long list of things that could help us move faster’.” His point was that the next 25 years are the most critical in the history of agriculture. “It’s not about producing more food forever. It’s about getting to 2050 without screwing things up.”

Trust, relationships, accountability

ORFC sessions were packed and many were turning people away. One of these standing-room-only sessions was on what funders and the movement can do together, led by the Food Ethics Council. The discussion surfaced some consistent themes: the importance of trust, relationships, accountability and transparency in how philanthropic money flows. Initiatives like the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and the RAFT Fund were highlighted as models where funders collaborate rather than compete. One recurring message from an ORFC session on storytelling that chimed with this: “We are in a moment of paradigm shift,” with uncertainty and looming threats, but also opportunity.

What we’re left with

The policy announcements from OFC including the inheritance tax threshold raised to £2.5m (allowing spouses or civil partners to pass on up to £5m), SFI reopening in June, and a new £30m Farmer Collaboration Fund have been well covered elsewhere. What’s harder to capture is the mood: a sector exhausted by uncertainty, hungry for clarity, but increasingly recognising that transformation is coming whether shaped by choice or crisis. The question is whether the conversations happening across Oxford’s two conferences can find common ground or whether the disconnect Dame Fiona Reynolds warned of will deepen. This brings us back to the beginning- Wednesday evening’s joint OFC and ORFC dinner, in its second year and demonstrating that conference participants have more in common than what differentiates us. This highlights for me the importance of our work to bring actors together, bridge divides, and build convergence on our pathway forwards.