Centre for Rural Policy Research Seminar Series

Ruth Hancock is a first generation farmer, and is the lead grower at Fresh and Green Vegetables - a medium scale agroecologically run Vegetable Box Scheme in East Devon. She started her agricultural journey after leaving school at seventeen and moving to Devon. Here she gained experience in a wide range of livestock and arable farming, and completed a three year National Diploma in Agriculture, at Bicton College in the early 1990's. Ruth will be sharing her experiences of setting up and running a productive, profitable, but also ecologically and socially conscious business, within the present constraints of the food system. Ruth is also a core group member of The Land Workers Alliance, a union of small scale farmers, that seeks to promote agroecological land use methods and aims to enable more people, from a greater diversity of backgrounds, to have the opportunity of making a living from producing food, fuel and fibre in an ecologically and socially conscious way. This presentation will link the practical and political to illustrate - and illuminate - a positive route forward to making good food and considerate land use an accessible, sustainable reality.