Oxford Farming Conference 2023: a new tale for farming folk

The Oxford Farming Conference 2023 was a welcome way to start the year and an opportunity to rewrite the narrative, says Becky Dodds, Agri-TechE Membership and Events Manager. The event was full of inspiration and thought-provocation from policymakers, farmers, international research, and of course the attendees themselves.

As I listened to the talks, I found a common theme emerging, but certainly not one I expected to find at an agriculture conference: one of story and narrative.

Many of the speakers touched on stories in different ways: some told us the story of their project or career journey; some spoke of our need for cohesive narrative in order to move forward; yet others spoke openly about the power of story.

In the beginning

In particular, Sir Tim Smit, Co-founder of the Eden Project, aptly described us as storytelling apes, and he’d be right: in the caves in which we used to dwell, you’ll find pictures helping to illustrate stories shown round a campfire.

Stories, much more so than numbers, are incredibly powerful – a key recent example was in Brexiteers presenting their arguments in compelling stories rather than the Remainers who chose to present hard facts. The key moments remembered by attendees at the Oxford Farming Conference will be the ones connected to emotion: the fruit picker calling his parents amazed at the size of his paycheck, the passion for cheesemaking on the dairy farm.

Stories are in a state of flux. The details change as they are told, person to person. Even when written down as an accepted version, each individual takes home a slightly different interpretation as we fit them into our own experience and life story.

An evolving narrative

Everyone who left the conference will have experienced the same version of events but will tell the story of what happened a bit differently, changing the emphasis or things of import according to their own views.  As farmer Mary Quicke said, the challenge comes when that vision become a fixed point; when the story we tell ourselves becomes stuck.

There were a number of questions asked that focussed around attracting new talent; perhaps it’s not down to better education or awareness, but a better story – one of how exciting agriculture is right now, with huge opportunities to get involved in new technologies, try out new methods of farming, and have a real collective impact on reversing climate change.

Sharing the story

Many more questions revolved around policy and uncertainty around those decisions, but Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin School, suggested that it’s down to us to come together, form a cohesive narrative and present that to government. Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank, told us how consumers – citizens – want to know the story of where their food has come from and that’s what will drive them to – or from – your produce.

All these people – policy makers, consumers, the workforce – want to hear our stories and be supportive of what we’re doing. We as an industry need to make our stories accessible, and tell them well.

Perhaps something not covered enough during the conference are the stories we tell ourselves; the ones that block us from moving forward, making change. We’re all guilty of it; if your New Year’s resolution was going for a morning run every day, some of you will have told yourself the story of how it’s too cold, too dark, too wet to run today.

Look beyond the myth

Many times in agriculture debates, or even general conversation among delegates, we hear the same phrases and statements thrown about as though they are true, but are they not just stories told from one person to the next without any real conviction behind them? Hopefully by attending conferences like this, and perhaps by looking outside our own industry, we can question what is accepted and remove those blockers stopping us from making real progress.

The power of persuasion

Bringing people into our story gives us the power of persuasion: it’s emotional, it’s messy and it plays to our primal desires for communication and connection. This power is what will allow us to influence policy the way we need it to be; to get the support of the public and help them trust in us and that the choices made on farm are the right ones; to help shape consumer demand to one that can enable us to be sustainable, environmentally and economically.

…and they all lived…

So perhaps my call to action from the conference is this: it’s up to us to choose the story we want to present of agriculture. My question is, what do we want the story of agriculture to say?

Blog contributed by Becky Dodds, Agri-TechE ‘s Membership and Events Manager