One October afternoon, we set the places for a feast. Enamel plates punctuated a long table, under borrowed festoon lights strung from the rafters. Wind whistled off of the Irish sea. At first glance, it may have appeared a standard farm to fork meal, a wholesome sharing of local produce and company. But this feast […]
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Katie Hastings, Seed Sovereignty Coordinator for Wales, and Gerard Miles, both co-founders of Llafur Ni, feature in a new video from the Financial Times on the increasing need for crop diversity. The Financial Times (FT) investigates the downside of our drive for increased yields from monocultures suited to industrial farming. The devastation of diversity, from […]
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In this 3-part series, created for #SeedWeek 2024, Wales coordinator Katie Hastings explores how seeds adapt to their climate and why seed sovereignty is so important when facing a future of climate chaos. Listen below, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts!
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Dylai bwyta’r ceirch yr ydych wedi tyfu bod yn beth hawdd I’w wneud / Eating the oats you have grown should be a simple thing to do. Katie Hastings, Gaia Seed Sovereignty Programme Coordinator for Wales, shares the story – and mystery – of the great Oats of Wales. When our Llafur Ni (Our Grains) […]
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Watch Gaia’s latest film – Llafur Ni (Our Grains)– about a farmer’s 20-year quest to find and revive the Welsh black oats his grandfather once grew. Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles has been on an epic quest to rediscover the rare black oats his grandfather once grew in Pembrokeshire fields overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. For […]
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Reviving Rare Oats, Spreading Bere Barley and (Re)Developing the Machinery to Process Them At the start of February, as the snow fell and the sky brooded, the grain growers of our Welsh and Scottish networks grabbed a coffee, signed on to Zoom, and settled in for a long day of talking oats, bere barley […]
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