The Landworkers’ Alliance is a union of farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers.

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If you have any comments, critiques, considerations, compliments, complaints, about anything the Landworkers Alliance is or isn’t up to, do let us know your thought. We love feedback, it keeps a system healthy. Please fill in this quick form.

Membership / Supporter / Donation Queries

Please contact Lauren.Simpson@landworkersalliance.org.uk

Requests for work, volunteering or internships

We are currently not recruiting for any roles but please read our newsletters for any announcements. We currently do not offer any volunteer or internship placements directly with the LWA, but keep an eye out in the newsletter or on the forum for any members looking for volunteers or workers.

Academic/Research Enquiries

Please look at the Agroecology Research Collaboration to see if it fits your area of research/work.

Membership Support / Advice

Currently the LWA does not have capacity or resources to help individual members or potential members on their specific projects, farms or programmes. We get a lot of requests for individual support and would love to have the time to respond to each request in full. We are fundraising for a new role for somebody to focus on membership support and services as we have identified it is a gap in our offering so please watch this space. Having said that, if your query is critical and urgent please email info@landworkersalliance.org.uk including the word URGENT in the subject header and it will get picked up and we can try our best to help.

Contacting Individual Staff

Please take the time to explore our staff page here to see who the most relevant contact for your enquiry is.

Our addresses format is firstname.lastname@landworkersalliance.org.uk

Please bear in mind we all work part time and have limited capacity to respond to enquiries outside our core areas of work.

You can also find information under the About Us header about branch and regional organising, and identity groups within the LWA membership.

Press/Media Enquiries:

For any queries relating to press please email press@landworkersalliance.org.uk

Merchandise/calendar Enquiries

For any enquiries to do with shop sales including the calendar please email merchandise@landworkersalliance.org.uk

To Include an Item in Our Newsletter:

You can fill in this quick form to submit it to be included in the next bulletin/newsletter. The deadline to submit is the end of Friday each week for the following week’s member bulletin. With the same form you can also submit to the monthly non-member newsletter which goes out in the first week of the month.

All Other Enquiries:

For any other enquiries that are URGENT please email info@landworkersalliance.org.uk with the word ‘urgent’ in the subject header and we will do our best to help.

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Empowering Farmers as Researchers

The next phase of our 'Experts in Your Field' Project

Empowering Farmers as Researchers: Next Phase of ‘Experts in Your Field’ Project
24/11/2023 Yali Banton Heath

We have recently received funding to expand our work in supporting small-scale agroecological farmers, growers and landworkers to carry out research and trials on their own farms as part of the ‘Experts in Your Field’ project. 

In the first phase of  ‘Experts in Your Field‘ we brought together a group of small-scale farmers, foresters, and food growers to collaboratively design an innovative research project centring their own expertise.

Through participatory workshops, we identified biodiversity as an initial priority theme, alongside sustainability and resilience, productivity, and community impacts of different agricultural practices. Participants were keen to gather data demonstrating how their sustainable practices support wildlife. We co-designed methodologies for on-farm testing of different biodiversity metrics over the busy summer season.

The hands-on process yielded fascinating findings while also highlighting barriers that farmers face in conducting their own research. Lack of time and funds for equipment were major constraints. Still, the willingness to engage was striking – 22 of the 40 landworkers who helped design the project participated in data collection, despite the hectic harvest period.

Beyond data collection, the greatest value was in connecting practitioners to share ideas and field insights. The camaraderie and mutual learning was palpable during farm visits and evaluation sessions. It became clear just how much applied knowledge resides within this community, even though research has not been explicitly part of their work.

We also gained key takeaways for how to structure farmer-led projects moving forward:

  • Compensate farmers fairly for their expertise and time. This shows that their knowledge matters and enables more participants.
  • Focus on practical methodologies aligned with on-farm realities and schedules. Academia doesn’t always fit the grounded needs of farmers.
  • Foster peer learning networks. On-farm experiments can feel isolating without a community to discuss challenges and interpretations.
  • Recognise barriers participants face, especially surrounding scarce time and resources. Securing equipment access and providing stipends to cover costs encourages involvement.

 Stay tuned for Phase 2, during which we will expand the farmer researcher cohort, digging deeper into biodiversity while also exploring themes like carbon sequestration, resilience, and regenerative productivity. There is so much wisdom yet to unfold! Find out more here

 

If you would like to learn more about how to get involved with this project then please come along to the free webinar on Monday the 11th of December – register here – or email Isobel on isobel.talks@landworkersalliance.org.uk.

If you are unable to attend the webinar, you can also register your interest here.

 

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