It was my third time in Oxford this year for the farming conferences, my second time at the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC).

“Your Grandpa used to go every year”, my mum said after discovering where I was for work that week.

A pretty cool feeling to know that I’d be walking the same streets and corridors that my Grandpa Herbert had been walking forty, perhaps fifty years ago?

Walking the Oxford streets with Group Twelve farmer Chad.

And I can see why he went every year too, upon hearing that one of our funders - The Aurora Trust - would be funding my place this year I was ecstatic; three days of lectures, learning, feeling inspired - what’s not to love?

Plus there’s the social element of networking, putting faces to names, meeting new people and catching up with old friends.

At Just Farmers we work remotely and my role is desk based probably 80% of the year, working solo from my garden office at home. Anyone else who does this knows it can get pretty lonely…

And as a Community Interest Company that relies on grants from organisations like The Aurora Trust, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Mercer Family Charitable Foundation (to name a few) to fund our charitable work, we don’t have many extra pennies in the pot to fund many three day trips to conferences.

So because I’m not always travelling around delivering talks to organisations like our founder Anna Jones often is, the opportunity to spend a few days away from the desk - in the heart of all it in Oxford is a real treat.

More than a treat, it’s valuable time well spent.

Catching up with our farmers was time well spent, here's Adam from Group Nine.

This year I was delighted to see nine farmers from our network at the Oxford Farming Conference (and I know that a few more of them were also over the road at the Oxford Real Farming Conference too!)

As our farmers are based all over the UK and I am based down in Surrey, meet ups don’t happen that frequently, so to get so many of them together at one event really was something special… but seeing their progression was something else.

Two of them had places from bursaries that they applied for, as a result of finding the confidence to apply after participating in one of our Media Education courses. Others represented the organisations they worked for off their farms, speaking at panel sessions and fringe events. Some were on the main stage, presenting new farming innovations, one was a part of this year’s OFC Inspire scheme, and one of our farmers (Sheena Horner) was actually on the board of OFC directors this year - and if that wasn’t enough it was announced that she would be the chair of next year’s conference too!

Ladies and gentlemen, the unstoppable Sheena Horner - 2027's Oxford Farming Conference chair!

I had to hold myself back from making a loud audible “WHOOP!” when they announced that one - it really wouldn’t have been the done thing… OFC is fun but it’s also a very serious and professional place - guest speaker Dominic Watters may be able to get away with referencing Stormzy and wearing Air Jordan 4 OG “concretes” (a type of shoe in case you weren’t aware) on the main stage, because you know - he's Dominic Watters, the guy's a legend - but no chance could I be seen to “WHOOP” and cheer, whilst fist pumping the air from the audience… so I just made my clapping a lot louder, until my hards hurt from clapping so hard, then I stopped.

Every conference has a theme, and this year it was resilience - something that “always comes back to people”, as Dr Jude McCann said in his opening speech, whilst he showed photos of his ancestors, talking about their resilience.

I took a moment to think about Grandpa Herbert again… when he was here all those years ago - representing himself as a dairy and arable farmer from the Midlands - would he have known a female farmer or "commoner", originally from Germany who now grazed Red Poll cattle on common land in Cambridge city centre? Or a Scottish farmer (another female!) who grew chillies in Dumfries and Galloway? Or a hazelnut farmer from Suffolk who describes his style of farming as “agroecological”? Would he have known these types of people? Were people even doing these sorts of things back then? Probably the commoning, not too sure about the chillies and the nuts though…

Hazelnuts were the talk of the town after Group Seven farmer Tom presented his thoughts at the Inspiring Innovators session.

The people that we have within our Just Farmers network truly are amazing - and they represent such a broad range different farming styles, sectors and systems.

A diverse network that’s only going to get more diverse, as our farmers become more resilient, navigating the ever changing climate, economy, politics and polarised views that are developing around the world, and within the farming communities themselves.

We all know that new challenges create new solutions - but it’s HOW we communicate those solutions that really matters.

Communication after all is the difference between division and unity, a lack of understanding and providing context, misinformation and fact.

This is the power that a narrative has.

At Just Farmers we help farmers and growers not only find their story, but we give them the confidence to own it and then share it with the rest of the world.

We do this by asking them to listen first, learn second and then communicate.

And in fact Group 12 farmer Fred Allen summed this up very nicely in an article he wrote for Pig World this week, the farming industry “needs defending. Not with weapons – although I’m sure there are many who would love to retaliate in that way – but with education.”

And in an increasingly polarised world of competing agendas, echo chambers and angry division, couldn’t we all do with a little bit more education?

I often wonder if my Grandpa Herbert was still alive what he would think of my job? This sort of job didn’t exist in the farming industry back then, to be honest, this job only really exists today with Just Farmers.

Grandpa Herbert - always in a tie, even when sat in his own living room in the comfort of his trusty armchair.

The work that we do is unique, it is the first (and only?) of its kind, and it is offering a solution to many of the challenges that the industry is currently facing.

It is creating new and diverse networks within UK agriculture, building a sense of community across the otherwise siloed, or even divided, agricultural sectors and systems, helping farmers stay connected in an isolated industry and it’s bridging the growing divide between rural and urban communities.

And it’s all done through our pioneering approach to media education where farmers can learn how to communicate on a human level, by finding that sweet point of mutual relevance with their audience.

That’s the story I would probably tell him.

… that and how if he was still around today, how much I would have enjoyed debriefing this year’s conference with him over a pint of Landlord in The Chequers pub.

Yes, definitely that.