Athens! Farming with Climate Conference

During the Halloween break I had the great opportunity to go the Farming with Climate conference, in Athens Greece. I was delighted to have the chance to attend the conference, and also to experience Athens and all it's amazing history.

A view across the Agora to the Parthenon, sitting on top of the Acropolis

The Farming with Climate conference was held in the Agricultural University of Athens, with many students from the college expertly helping to corall the 260 or so attendees.

The conference was organised by three different groups working together, Climate Farm Demo, Climate Smart Advisors and Climate Smart Research.  We are part of the Climate Farm Demo project in Ireland, and are actually Ireland’s Climate Lighthouse Farm.  We along with other Lighthouse Farmers across Europe attended along with advisors, researchers, policy makers and others .

The conference was a mix of plenary sessions, deep dive sessions, where topics were thoroughly discussed in very interactive ways, and inspiration sessions where different aspects were presented and these sessions were also generally interactive too.

The sessions were varied and interesting.  I had the honour of contributing in a couple of

sessions.

There was lots of great discussion and many connections made across Europe.  It was inspiring to spend time with my fellow light house farmers and hear about what they are doing and what challenges they face.  We discovered that while there may be many things different about our countries and our farm systems, we also had a lot in common.  Our motivation, our challenges and our enthusiasm to find ways to farm in conjunction with nature, and to look for ways to mitigate against Climate change, and willingness to engage in research.

Getting a tour of the farm belonging to Theo Kontogiannis, Greece's Climate Lighthouse farmer. He produces olives, almonds, and grapes for both wine and raisin production. He is having great success farming biodynamically and embracing nature. He also said they had had a very wet summer, which why everywhere was unusually green. So now we know where the rain was this summer!

My brain is bursting with ideas and thoughts and my notebook, is full of circled sidenotes, and starred text boxes! I’m sure there will be many a blog in the future that references back to this moment!

We also had some of time to get to know each other a little and build the network of Climate Demo Farmers. It is amazing how much learning can happen on a bus, or over dinner! As we always say here, it's about Real Positive Change. These are farmers, who like us are being real about the issues, and looking for something positive they can do, and then they are making that change. We don't need to take on the world, we just need to make the changes that we can, and we can all do something, whether you are a farmer or not.

Climate Farm Demo representatives, including Climate Lighthouse Farmers from Ireland, Sweden, Latvia and Slovenia.

As for Athens itself, if you are thinking of going, I would say, do it!  Perhaps not in the height of the summer.  I hear it is savage hot, and the crowds are also intense. Even at the end of October there were plenty of tourists around.  The history of the place is phenomenal.  It turns out that if you want something to last the millenia, then marble is a decent building material!

Socrates and Confucius deep in discussion in the Agora, the birthplace of democracy.

I also found that the people were very welcoming. Really genuinely friendly. I travelled on my own and spent a couple of days exploring aside from the conference, and I felt comfortable and safe at all times.

The Parthenon and Acropolis by night.