By Rona Webster
A Cumbrian conference
Carbon Calling CIC is holding its fourth conference on Tuesday 24th to Thursday 26th June at Sleastonhow, Kirkby Thore and Cannerheugh Farm, both near Penrith, Cumbria. The conference is run and organised by farmers and features many farmer speakers. It will bring a community of farmers and their supporters together over three days for focused conversations in an informal setting.
Carbon Calling CIC aims to empower livestock farmers in the UK to develop their systems to ensure they are profitable, environmentally aware and improving well-being. Attendees will come away with practical ways to start on your regenerative farming journey.
Headline speakers
Headline speaker this year Jules Matthews will be the highlight of Wednesday. Jules is an agroecological farmer, educator and coach – she was Nicole Masters’ (Integrity Soils) coach and she helped to establish Mangaroa Farms near Wellington, New Zealand, where regenerative principles guide the farming practice for a market garden, livestock production and community engagement.
She works with the Quorum Sense Farmer Network in NZ and Integrity Soils. Along with this she also runs a 400-ha beef and lamb finishing operation and is part of the advisory team for Massey University’s 7-year regenerative research programme.
Jules will be talking about how to restore the microbial bridge in soil and people, linking nutrient dense products to people, providing the NZ perspective on uptake of regenerative farming and how to drive change on a farm. Follow this link to learn more about Jules Matthews.
Programme highlights
The conference is also pleased to welcome Dr David Unwin award-winning GP known for pioneering the low-carb approach in the UK. For the past few years he has been a UK Royal College of General Practitioners expert clinical advisor on diabetes. He joins the Wednesday session on Eating for Health. This session will focus on the health benefits of a more sustainable diet and discuss the role that farmers and supply chains have to ensure accessibility. Here’s a link to Dr David Unwin’s website, including interviews and articles.
Carbon Calling cofounder Liz Genever says “We want to create a space where farmers are comfortable to share experiences, knowledge and failures, and to build their support network. Curiosity and openness is what we want people to bring to the conference, and we will provide the opportunity to meet with a range of people. Running over three days this year, we’re really excited to see what comes out of it.”
Other programme highlights include Tuesday’s ‘focus’ sessions, which will explore themes of local supply chains and regenerative systems. The morning will be led by Nicola MacPhail from Gen-I, who will share insights from a recent project with Food Futures, focusing on how to build resilient, localised supply networks. This will be followed by an interactive session featuring speakers from organisations based in the north of England, including Vista Veg, Northumberland County Council, Westmorland Family and H&H.
In the afternoon, the focus will shift to building regenerative systems at scale. Speakers from the Wild Hare Group, Ruumi, and Lake District Farmers will present their perspectives and the day will conclude with a panel discussion featuring representatives from across the supply chain.
Thursday is about keeping ‘curious’ and will be a great opportunity to visit Cannerheugh Farm, run by regenerative farmers Nic and Paul Renison for a farm walk and workshop with Jules Matthews.
There are ample opportunities to enjoy the bar and locally produced food each day. The conference also offers camping tickets for people who want to stay and enjoy live music.
Carbon Calling has recently announced an exciting new partnership with Chirrup.ai, a nature-tech company helping land managers track biodiversity through birdsong. The collaboration will see Chirrup.ai’s cutting-edge biodiversity monitoring devices trialled on ten farms across Cumbria and the North of England, bringing valuable insights into the health and biodiversity of real farming landscapes. The data from the trial will be showcased at Carbon Calling.
Carbon Calling Podcast
If you want to find more about Carbon Calling CIC and hear from some of this year’s Conference speakers, you can listen to Liz & Nic’s podcast ‘ReGenAg Chat’, which delves into everything regenerative and agroecological.
Recent guests include Antony Yousefian, who is the founder of The First Thirty (TFT). Through TFT they are investing in companies that are using nature within the solution and Marian Boswall who is a landscape architect, author and will be chairing a session on the Wednesday of this year’s conference.
Get involved!
2025 Early Bird Tickets now on sale from the Carbon Calling website.
https://www.carboncalling.farm
The Carbon Calling back story….
Carbon Calling CIC was established by two farmers – Liz Genever (from Lincolnshire, also a consultant and educator) and Nicola Renison (from Cumbria, also an educator and WWOOF UK host) – to empower other livestock farmers to set clear goals to help their business, livestock, soils, wildlife and well-being. Carbon Calling CIC runs events, conferences and a podcast – ReGenAg chat – to engage farmers with a range of people and approaches.
Three successful conferences have been organised by Carbon Calling CIC since 2022. They attracted over 700 people. The conferences have been designed to be a mixture of learning and inspiring, plus developing deeper technical knowledge. Carbon Calling also run winter events and webinars, with support from Frank Parkinson Agricultural Trust. They have recently been awarded a grant from Esmee Fairburn Foundation.
We’d like to give a big thank you to Rona Webster for writing this article for us and hope that some of you will make it to Carbon Calling 2025. If you’d like to know more about Carbon Calling co-founder and WWOOF host Nic Renison then follow this link to the article Nic wrote for WWOOF UK news, ‘Lightbulb moments’.
