Cross Pollinate 2024 Speakers

Robyn is a keen proponent of food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture.

In 2020, she spent a year working in the fields and in the seedbank at Navdanya Biodiversity Conservation Farm, an Indian-based non-governmental organisation established by Dr Vandana Shiva to uphold traditional Indian agricultural practices, the biodiversity of indigenous seeds, and the rights of small scale farmers.  Perhaps she left a piece of her heart there, because it keeps drawing her back, and she has spent time living and working in communities and villages in the Himalayan region, farming, working with natural building techniques and advocating for soil health and biodiversity.

She has completed her Permaculture Design Certificate with Geoff Lawton and an internship with him at his Greening the Desert Project in Jordan, and now supports his online PDC course as a teaching assistant.  She has trained in Dr Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web method, and is a certified lab tech under that program. 

Robyn will be opening the conference with a presentation called Seeds of Hope.

Joel is a food systems activist, passionate advocate for young farmers and local food, and an activated agricultural industry networker. His interests are in exploring the social sustainability of local food production and tackling the issue of an ageing farmer population.

Joel is also one of the co-founders of Young Farmers Connect, a national not for profit organisation that unites new, young, and aspiring farmers providing tailored education and peer to peer learning across Australia. YFC advocates for and empowers small scale farmers to thrive in agriculture, to grow resilient local communities and to regenerate landscapes, and are following in the footsteps of generations of farmers by continuing to plant seeds of radical optimism

Young Farmers Connect has recently conducted a national survey of small-scale farmers to understand the challenges and opportunities of the sector. Joel will give an overview of the data collected and discuss the exciting work happening at Young Farmers Connect to build on the movement of small-scale farmers nationally.

“Groups of people working together collaboratively with a common purpose can pool ideas, build wise strategies, support each other and have some fun along the way. Well-functioning collaborative groups hold transformative potential far greater than the ‘sum total of the parts’. There is something quite amazing about all that synthesised energy – all of us are smarter than any of us.” Getting our Act Together, Glen Ochre

Keeley and Dave are two thirds of the Sparrow Foot Collective. Bringing together Keeley’s business, Fat Pig Produce, with Sparrow Foot Farm, run by Dave and his partner Ines, they have formed a collaboration that aims to bolster each farm, share workloads, create a diversity of ideas, produce more food, and increase productivity.

In their presentation they will discuss the benefits of the partnership, how their collaboration offers both their businesses hope, and how you have negotiated any potential conflict resolution.

Mitch is the head gardener at The Agrarian Kitchen. After training as a chef and doing stints cooking in NSW and in Japan, Mitch had an epiphany: he could take care of his ethical concerns around food consumption, around environment and around community not by cooking, but by growing.

After working with Tony Scherer at Rocky Top Farm it led Mitch to becoming head gardener for the Agrarian Kitchen restaurant in New Norfolk. When owners Rodney Dunn and Séverine Demanet decided to consolidate their operation and create a whole new 1-acre walled market garden on the Willow Court site in New Norfolk, they hired Mitch to do it.

Mitch will be discussing how the lack of research into regenerative farming and practises related to it is a hamstring to the growth of the space, how data is required to prove the claims of farmers, and how this actually presents real opportunities for producers.

Christina is an agricultural scientist with a long standing interest in Regenerative Agriculture. She heard about biochar many years ago, and became interested in its potential benefits in home gardening with her FIMBY gardening customers. The opportunity to sequester carbon from waste streams, while providing soil and plant (and human) health benefits led her to making biochar in pit kilns for use in her own garden and with customers.

The New Black Biochar project emerged from conversations between Christina and friend Bodie, who runs a timber business, and was kick started by a crowd funding campaign in 2017 which raised funds for the purchase of some of the equipment needed to bring their vision to life.

Christina will be presenting on the opportunities biochar presents for farmers, the various applications, and it’s role in a changing climate.

James and Ben are co-founders of Farm My School, a ground breaking model of food education that transforms unused land within schools into regenerative market gardens that feed, educate and connect communities.

In October 2022, 600 community volunteers travelled from across Victoria to work with students from the Bellarine Secondary College and FMS founders to lay the groundwork for the first pilot farm in a unique 24 hour ‘Build a Farm in a Day’ event. Together they transformed a disused soccer pitch into a one and a half acre market garden with over 2km of no-dig garden beds.

In their presentation, James and Ben will explain how the call to action resulted in an incredible 24 hours, and how potential engagement with a diverse range of partners within the local community, including collaborators from the education, health and water sectors, can provide hope for farmers.

Jo Poulton is a UK based farmer and campaign co-ordinator for Basic Income 4 Farmers.

The campaign was created last year by a working group of farmers, growers, academics and union co-ordinators with personal and professional experience of the issues explored. The aim of the campaign is to encourage farmers, farmworkers and food producers to discuss possible solutions to the financial barriers they face.

Jo and the team working on the campaign have called for a Basic Income that would provide unconditional cash payments to farmers, farmworkers and food producers to provide them with essential financial stability, and have recently published a report outlining the case.

In a recorded interview with Ollie, Jo spent some time explaining the idea, how it offers hope to farmers, what the outcomes would be, and what the future of the campaign looks like.

The Beauty of Persistence is the first of our panel discussions that will be facilitated by Felicity Richards. Felicity is a farmer and currently chairs the Tasmanian Livestock Processing Taskforce.

The discussion will explore ways farmers find joy in farming, outside of the business, examine instances where farmers persisted through tough times when they could easily have walked away, and hear stories from those that have had an awakening, a crisis, or a particular event in their lives that has led them to look for the joy in what they do.

Sam Bartels is an agribusiness strategist who seeks to elevate, amplify and connect the people, businesses and ideas either side of the factory/farm gate that are actively improving the food system.

She has areas of expertise in development and strategy and stakeholder engagement, has developed and launched products and built investment materials and relationship, and is actively engaged in the ag community in order to foster the required connection to the land and trust of the communities who steward it.

Sam will be taking a broad look into big picture trends and tech that support regeneration, including hyperspectral imaging, virtual fencing and remote land health verification.

Leah Galvin is a qualified project consultant and Churchill Fellow, brining over 30 years experience of project and program management in all areas of regional development and community health and wellbeing.

Each year, 9 million government-funded meals are served in Tasmanian public institutions, providing huge opportunities to source and serve a lot of healthy Tasmanian food in our institutions. Leah’s project, Sustainable Institutional Food Procurement Tasmania (SIFPT), calls for investment in a new Tasmanian Farm to Institution Program that would provide benefits for the economy by creating new local markets and more jobs in our regions on farms, with processors and wholesalers.

In her presentation, Leah will discuss the opportunities for farmers that this program would bring, and what it will take to get the program off the ground.

​

Peter Gilmore is the Executive Chef at two of Australia’s most dynamic restaurants; Bennelong at the Sydney Opera House and Quay restaurant across the harbour in The Rocks. Peter was born and bred in Sydney. He was inspired to cook at a young age and started his apprenticeship at 16, then spent his twenties working in kitchens overseas and in country New South Wales, developing his own style.

Across both restaurants, Peter describes his cuisine as food inspired by nature and as a passionate gardener himself, he was one of the first chefs in Australia to embrace heirloom varieties of vegetables and continues to work in partnership with small producers who cultivate produce exclusively for both Quay and Bennelong. Peter collaborates with a range of producers across Australia and his appreciation of nature’s diversity and his endless experimentation in the kitchen and garden are the driving forces in his cooking.

Peter will be having a live discussion on stage with Sprout CEO Jen Robinson, about what he sees drivers are for chefs to become interested in sourcing local, seasonal produce.

The Future of Food is a panel discussion that will be facilitated by Felicity Richards. Felicity is a farmer and currently chairs the Tasmanian Livestock Processing Taskforce.

The discussion will involve three individuals who are deeply entrenched in understanding the future of our food. Matthew Evans (farmer, chef and food writer), Dr Alana Mann (communications scholar, author, and food politician), and Sam Perkins (CEO of Cellular Agriculture Australia) will be on stage to discuss and debate how our future food will be grown, raised and produced, the potential knock of effects to human and planetary health, and also the opportunities they see for farmers.