Four Things I Learned at Feeding Ourselves 2025

Feeding Ourselves saw 20+ partners from 40+ organizations, and 180 people over 4 days and nights in Cloughjordan. As a snapshot of the food sovereignty (agroecological and good/fair food) movement in Ireland, it’s a great barometer of where things are at. There are many different ways to try to encapsulate what it is and how it works, but, for this author, here are four things which emerged from Feeding Ourselves 2025. Oliver Moore reports.

Communities and Regions

This was the year that a community integrated and regional approach really came home. The emergence of a biodistrict in the midwest taking the anchor institutions (community wealth building) approach was heartening to see. The growing work of the bioregional weaving lab and its connections to farms via the ‘our farm’ Dutch approach was also a great example of progress. Here, a coop leases a farm and employs a farmer. Popular in the Netherlands, it’s coming to Ireland now too. 

The work by Cooperative Alternatives on Community Supported Agriculture has been inspirational.

The meet the producer events held by Carlow Environmental Network show what can be done at grassroots level.

The garden in a box driven by Leitrim Organic Farmers coop shows even more ways to bring communities into farming.

And as our CODECS session on Sunday morning showed, the growth of the North Tipperary Online farmers Market (a digital farmers market using non-proprietary code and other community embedded approaches) show much promise for local producers.

Foundational to all these approaches is the provisioning of basic supports to farmers  – be it a basic or a bioregional income. This respect and certainty and connection is what sets these and similar approaches apart – and what gives us foundational building blocks for policy proposals such as the Talamh Beo local food policy framework.

Fringe > Core

Permaculture principles tell us to look to the margins. Well, this time, we really did – albeit in a gloriously evolving and organic way. Turns out the main conference style gathering is but one aspect of an event where everyone has a say and a way in.

This fringe programme was extremely popular, bringing in a whole host of new people, emotions, senses, ways and approaches.

Both Thursday and Friday evening sessions were absolutely packed, and humming. Both saw films – with Q&A afterwards – which tapped into deeper, wider ways of knowing and feeling. 

For more on these films and their impact, see further down. 

But it was about more than just films too. It was about a large live acoustic music session where everyone with an instrument was welcome (the famous first friday session, held during the conference); it was about eating and dancing together (Eats and Beats) where people could let go and connect, could nourish and let off some steam, in long moments of fun and camaraderie.  

What’s crucial in all of this is that new people found their way in. Not everyone like a conference format – however participatory and inclusive the methodology. With thought, everyone can have  a seat at the table –  or in the music circle, or at the screening, or on the dancefloor.

New ways of knowing – re-membering new decolonial practice 

A new strand for Feeding Ourselves came as a gift all the way from the tumultuous Turtle Island  – the Deep Medicine Circle and Farming as Medicine work of Rupa Marya and colleagues. 

This whole systems health work brings decolonial practice via truly regenerative farming, into the body and its tramas, its inflammations and its healing.

There are big places for public procurement and real opportunities with the work that’s coming to Ireland  via Farming is Medicine. 

This film screening (short version above) and Q&A was a real highlight, especially with Ireland having a specific relationship to colonialism.

The interview with Rupa – unplanned – was inspired by the sight of the rooftop garden, a high hub for regenerative work which heals the soil too. The last time this author encountered a rooftop garden was above the Lajee centre, next to the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank. 

The longer version of the film started with Rupa’s work highlighting the unconscionable attacks on doctors and nurses and on infrastructure in Gaza, and relating this to the rapidfire colonialism of the Israeli project and its impact on Palestine.

The system in Lajee is hydroponic as there is no soil in the refugee camp. But growing food for your community creates and is resilience in the strongest possible way.

Ireland’s role in and experience of colonialism means so many things for farming and food today –  an export-driven commodity agri-food focus build on extractivism, leaving a legacy that can be traced to today’s live exports (value-adding is always done in the core, the metropole not the periphery under colonialism); strong dairy co-ops which emerged from the land wars, where a largely successful non violent direct action campaign took the land back (1870s to 1920s) while also inventing the concept and practice of boycotting; a concurrent lack of local mixed farming – and in particular a lack of local horticulture. 

Our conversation touched off so much and so many strands – but most inspirational was the spontaneous Irish speaking which emerged  – literally from the ground up. It felt like it was coming through people from their roots: Questions from the floor  – bilingual at first – 

Lamented having a session on de-colonial struggle in an imposed language. Then someone stood up and named themselves in Irish, as well as their nearest significant mountain and river – as she’d learned from indigenous Maori people. It was a simple way to speak and situate yourself. Then a farmer stood up and spoke such simple Irish about bringing it all together that I somehow ended up translating…I don’t (think I) have good Irish but it channeled through me that powerful, emotional evening.

Integrating the elders

For me, perhaps it’s an age thing (ironically) but elders’ language can seem clunky at times. But, this time, it landed via the land. The film premier of the garden where the praties grow was  shown to a completely packed house – and it was full of amazing people who pioneered the good farming and good food movement in Ireland. These include the founders of the Irish Seed Savers and the founder of the Organic College in Ireland, now deep into their 70s. A completely new audience, a film full of songs dead since famine times; and a way to express and experience agri-cultural nourishment.

This too was decolonial praxis, but so gently and subtly so. 

On Sunday, for the 3rd year in a row, local conventional farmers – this time all older – came and shared a deep listening space with us. These farmers are largely drawn from the local fertilizer purchasing whatsapp group (its own form of meitheal!) so it was truly a meeting of minds and styles. 

For those who campaign on environmental matters, for agroecologists, and for the local mostly dairy farmers, it was such a calm and respectful space.  My collie dog slept, flaked out, through it all – a barometer for the mood. 

The method is – 15 minutes all listening to the local conventional farmers; 15 minutes listening to people from the conference; 5 mins small group chats (no more than 3, with each talking uninterrupted in sequence) then feedback. 

The instruction was – give no advice, no excessive body language or blaming, just proper, long form listening.

Ireland being Ireland, the energy of the small group chats was so high that everyone kept chatting and wilfully ignored whatever I said about wrapping up. But, eventually, we did that. 

And it was lovely to share a meal together after – the local farmers stayed on for what turned out to be a vegan curry afterwords/wards. This has never happened in the 3 years we’ve done this thus far. 

The trust, understanding  and respect are all deepening. Maybe the birds tweeting outside the window helped a little…some tweets are good in a world gone madder.

There was of course much more to this long weekend – like, the programme. But its not always about the programme. 

This article was supported by the Strengthening Local Food Economies in Ireland thematic Project via the Irish Environmental Network. Talamh Beo, Feasta and Cultivate are all involved in this project.