Last week, Michael Fitzsimmons – Feeding Liverpool’s Food Enterprise Coordinator – attended the 2026 Oxford Real Farming Conference to find out how progressive approaches to food and farming can help shape the food system of the future and inform the work we do at Feeding Liverpool. This blog highlights Michael’s take-aways from some of the sessions he attended and his reflections on the event as a whole.

Based in Oxford Town Hall and across several satellite venues, the conference – now in its 17th year – covers a broad range of discussion, from farm practices to food policy and justice. The opening plenary was an inspiring call to action from a selection of land workers; it was put to the gathering that change is possible and that it will come from the ground up.

I first attended a talk on how ethical wholesale businesses can bridge the gap between agroecological farms and the hospitality industry – building good values into the supply chain, educating chefs on the realities of farming, facilitating routes to market for producers and embedding good business practices. This ties into the work Feeding Liverpool have been developing with Kindling Farm and offered insight and inspiration into how we can support food producers within the city region, as well as the Liverpool Food Growers Network to meaningfully engage with food retail and hospitality SMEs in the city.

Sustain‘s Local Food Lead, Rachel Jones, later facilitated a workshop discussion around implementing findings from Sustain’s Local Food Growth Plan and Bridging The Gap reports, and FoodRise and Better Food Traders‘ Purpose Over Profit report. Lucy Antal also presented on the work of FoodRise and Alchemic Kitchen; it was heartening to see attendees’ positive response to the Queen of Greens service. Participants then had a chance to reflect upon presentations from Rachel, Lucy, Better Food Traders’ Lucy Kirby-Smith and Georgia Phillips from Soil Association, which all demonstrated how increasing the visibility of and access to high quality fresh produce had been identified as an important lever from improving health outcomes in communities.

Continuing on the theme of health, I next attended a panel discussion on how increased engagement with horticulture can have beneficial health outcomes for those who struggle to access fresh, nutritious produce. Jo Poulton, Co-Lead Grower at Sim’s Hill Shared Harvest in Bristol, spoke about how they offer opportunities for their members to get involved in volunteering on the farm; this helps to give members a chance to engage with food growing – connecting them with nature and improving their wellbeing. The Mazi Project – which is also located in Bristol – works with victims of domestic abuse, asylum seekers, care leavers and youths recovering from homelessness, creating and distributing meal kits and running cookery classes. Lily Farmer from The Mazi Project believes that increasing a community’s access to local produce is a key driver in creating a more sustainable, secure and equitable food future – a belief that has been echoed in Liverpool through the creation of a wealth of community food growing projects.

In the next session, I was given an insight into how Sussex Surplus, City Harvest and the Felix Project redistribute surplus from farm produce. Attendees were told that 3.3 million tonnes of produce goes to waste on UK farms each year and that these organisationsaim to make use of the surplus to tackle food insecurity. The panel discussed the mutual benefits of working closely with farmers to not only give people the opportunity to get onto farms and learn where their food comes from, but to also provide farmers with social engagement. There was a valid question made about whether this kind of surplus redistribution lets large businesses of the hook who, it was suggested, should be facing stricter regulations to prevent this much avoidable waste being created in the first place. Charlie Neal from the Felix project spoke about how they would like to see farmers receive government payments for donating surplus to food redistribution networks. Sussex Surplus, on the other hand, run a particularly interesting and potentially duplicable model of running volunteer gleaning days for community groups and companies. Gleaning is an age-old practice in which leftover crops are salvaged from farms after commercial harvest; in modern times, a large amount of produce may be left in fields as it does not conform to the strict specifications set by supermarkets. Sussex Surplus take the produce they glean and turn it into long-life products such as soups, provide a weekly, free community meal and raise funds through event catering. This is a great example of how innovative approaches to using farm surplus can create social value for communities.

The conference was an incredible boost to morale and offered plenty of inspiration for the work we are developing at Feeding Liverpool. Despite all the difficulties facing our communities, it was heartening to see so many working on the solutions to these issues and having real, positive effects.