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East of England Farming Conference
Speakers line up for farming conference
Speakers include climate change committee chairman Lord Deben
Final preparations are being made for next month’s East of England Farming Conference.
The conference is due to be held on Thursday, 18 November, at the East of England Showground, Peterborough. It promises an expert line-up of speakers – with ample time for questions from the audience and networking by delegates.
Organised by the East of England Agricultural Society, the conference is aimed at practical farmers – encouraging them to participate in discussion sessions and then take home inspiring ideas that can be applied to their farm businesses.
Speakers will include Lord Deben, chairman of the Committee on Climate Change. As John Gummer, he was the UK’s longest-serving environment secretary and also served as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food.
Soil farmer
Other speakers include Essex farmer Simon Cowell – who won the 2018 Soil Farmer of The Year competition, which was organised by the Farm Carbon Cutting Toolkit and Innovation for Agriculture.
He started getting interested in soil and its biology twenty years ago and has been improving his heavy clay soils by stopping all tillage, making and applying highly biologically active compost and building mycorrhizal fungi populations. To prove the theory that a balanced soil food web can provide all the nutrients a crop needs, he hasn’t applied any phosphate or potash fertilisers in all that time and has started experimenting with cutting out nitrogen applications as well
Tickets on sale
This year will be the first time the annual conference has been held since 2018. It was cancelled due to bad weather in 2019 – and then cancelled again in 2020 due to restrictions imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
It means this year’s conference will be the first for organising committee members – now BASIS head of environment and public affairs Teresa Meadows and Leicestershire farmer and conservationist Joe Stanley.
To find out more about the conference and to attend the event as a delegate, please book your tickets online via the website www.eoefarmingconference.co.uk
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