Designing Regenerative Food Systems

Designing Regenerative Food Systems: And Why We Need Them Now

Marina O'Connell (author)

This is a toolkit for farmers and growers of tried and tested agroecological methods for transforming industrial food growing. Design tools are outlined to design regenerative, sustainable systems for growing good food from healthy soil in a low input, closed loop system. The four challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation, offsetting biodiversity loss and producing enough good food are identified. The author uses the case study of her Huxhams Cross Farm to show how dead soil was transformed into a thriving fertile land, drawing on a toolkit of biodynamic, organic, agroforestry, regenerative, agroecological and permacultural methods. The principles, methods and techniques of each approach are explained concisely, with illustrative case studies of successful examples and follow up resources such as film references. The book concludes with the Huxhams Cross Farm impact case study with research evidence; a review of the extent to which the four challenges are tackled successfully by the Toolkit; how the resilient farming revolution can be brought about by food choices, policy, tackling barriers such as land access; the psychology of scarcity and how to build farmer capacity.

Marina O’Connell is a successful grower, farmer and educator. Born of seven generations of Dutch nurserymen from Boskoop in Holland which is famous for fruit trees, she celebrates the professional women now pioneering the transition to resilient food production and to re- localising the food economy. Marina, the Apricot team and her family have turned the bare land at Huxhams Cross Farm, Totnes, Devon, UK, from being ‘a miserable bit of land’ as a local farm contractor called it in 2015, into a productive, beautiful, community connected and profitable farm. She has action researched the use of biodynamic, organic, permacultural, agroecological, regenerative and agroforestry methods in her work. She leads by example. People from all over Britain and the world visit her farm and go on her courses and a Devon apprenticeship scheme for regenerative food systems She is consulted by farmers asking her to help redesign their farms away from industrial farming, and by farm estates needing help to undertake the successful transition to resilient food systems by 2030.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hawthorn Press (21 Feb. 2022)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1912480548
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 19.05 x 1.52 x 24.77 cm