This year’s Byron Writers Festival will see a number of critical conversations take place around how we can farm better. ‘A key aspect that we need to address in tackling climate change is the approach we take to growing and distributing our food, while caring for land and country,’ said Zoe Pollock, artistic director of Byron Writers Festival. ‘With that in mind, we’ve invited a brains trust of experts in new and ancient methods of farming to explore the environmental and economic solutions to this major challenge.’
Celebrated Indigenous historian Bruce Pascoe will be leading the conversation with an exploration of how Aboriginal people cultivated the land using water flows, vegetation, and firestick practice. ‘Every product we use must be stamped with our determination that our great-grandchildren can enjoy them in the future’ writes Pascoe in his most recent book, Future Fire, Future Farming, co-authored with Bill Gammage.
Farmer and climate change educator Anika Molesworth will also be featured. ‘Overall, we need to increase soil carbon where that can be achieved. This means drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and getting it back into the ground and into vegetation’, says Molesworth. A man who knows a thing or two about soil is Matthew Evans, who will be joining the festival lineup to help us better understand the rich resource that soil is. He’ll be joined by fellow soil aficionados Indira Naidoo and Costa Georgiadis for a conversation to celebrate the joy of gardening and all that the act of growing food can bring us in daily life.
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