12pm, Saturday 1st July 2023

Bio-Caledonia will be the key note event of GO Falkland, being held at Falkland Estate, Fife. GO (Groundswell Outreach) Falkland is a one-day event featuring talks and sessions on regenerative farming, sharing knowledge from leading practitioners, soil health specialists, and farmers.

Bio-Caledonia

The Scottish Government has set out an ambitious new strategy to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and reverse it by 2045. This will require transformational change. As agriculture uses 70 per cent and forestry 20 per cent of land in Scotland, farmers, foresters and land managers are going to have to fully integrate new biodiversity management into their existing approaches. In less than seven years, we will need to meet these tough new targets which will be impossible to ignore. Davy McCracken, Integrated Land Management, SRUC who sits on the Scottish Government's Scottish Biodiversity Advisory Group, will set out the context of the biodiversity crisis and, along with a panel of farmers, foresters and landscape planner, will discuss the issues and answer your questions.

CHAIR: Lucy Filby

Head of Land & Forestry Transition Net Zero, South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE)

Lucy Filby is the Head of Land and Forestry Transition at South of Scotland Enterprise, an organisation that lives its values of being Bold, Striving, Inclusive and Responsible.  She has over 20 yrs experience of building partnership projects to improve environmental outcomes in farming and wider food and drink value chains. Lucy joined SOSE 14 months ago from SEPA where she worked for over 20 years, latterly leading their sustainable growth deal as part of the landscape enterprise network. . This move came about because of her passionate belief that the health of our environment cannot be protected or improved without also tackling poverty and inequality. An aspiring regenerative practitioner, she loves working in the spaces between current reality and future vision. She is an advocate for business to be a force for good, growing prosperity and resilience together, within planetary limits. When not working , Lucy can be found wild swimming, spinning & weaving with wool, gardening or dog walking. Lucy is also on the board of the Coalfield Environment Initiative.

Davy McCracken

Head of department, Integrated Land Management, Scotland's Royal College (SRUC)

Davy McCracken joined SRUC in 1995 and has been Head of SRUC’s Hill & Mountain Research Centre, at Kirkton & Auchtertyre farms near Crianlarich, since 2013 and Head of SRUC’s wider Integrated Land Management Department since 2019. The Centre is seeking to ensure that the farms provide a platform for upland agricultural, environmental and – increasingly – agro-forestry research and demonstration. Davy studies farming and wildlife interactions and has been working on agricultural and agri-environmental policy at a national and international level for 30 years. He has been involved in providing advice and guidance on policy development to a wide range of governmental and NGO committees over the years and is currently inputting to the development of both Scotland’s new agricultural support policy and future biodiversity strategy. More information at: https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/en/persons/davy-mccracken

Johnnie Balfour

Balbirnie

Johnnie Balfour is Chair of Pasture for Life and the Managing Partner at Balbirnie Home Farms, a long time Falkland Estate neighbour.  He has a Geography degree from Edinburgh University and a Post Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Agriculture from Charles Sturt University in New South Wales.  He is also a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.  He would like regenerative agricultural practices to become the norm across enterprises and across the industry and would like to reduce synthetic inputs to zero.

Johnnie is a director of the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, a Soil Association agroecology ambassador, a steering group member of the Nature Friendly Farming Network.

Helen O’Keefe

Middleton Croft

Helen O’Keefe is a crofter, café owner and local food campaigner in the NW Highlands. After working as an engineer in Australia, she moved to Scotland eight years ago. Since then she has worked on the land, strengthening the communities and culture of her adopted home and helping build a better food system that benefits both people and nature. As a crofter, she is responsible for her 3 ha of croft land and, in collaboration with other crofters, over 1,500 ha of extensively grazed grassland, moorland and wetland. She produces mutton, eggs, fruit and veg (as well as high quality wool), while working to improve the condition of the habitats she farms in. She is a Trustee of the Highland Good Food Partnership, member of the Scottish Crofting Federation’s Council and has co-founded a local food hub, The Green Bowl, encouraging more production of food locally and helping to make local food accessible to more people.

Eleanor Harris

Galbraith

Dr Eleanor Harris MICFor is Natural Capital and Carbon Leader at Galbraith. She led on development of the Galbraith Natural Capital Atlas assessment tool, oversees management of Galbraith's Woodland Carbon Code projects, is working with clients to develop landscape-scale natural capital projects, and presents the podcast, Talking Natural Capital. An experienced environmental professional who previously worked for Confor and Scottish Environment LINK, she has been responsible for several important initiatives and reports including Carbon market turnkey funding platform: unlocking carbon opportunities in Argyll & Bute; Biodiversity, forestry and wood; Eskdalemuir: carbon benefit from forestry and timber; the Scottish Parliament Species Champions project, and Eco-Congregation Scotland. Eleanor is also an academic historian, and Affiliate Researcher at the School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow.

artistic contributions

Moteh Parrott ‘Song for Insects’

Rachel Tennant ‘Humans share 50% of their DNA with Trees’

RACHEL TENNANT is a landscape architect, poet and photographer. Her work combines all these art forms and is an exploration of landscape and people –the tentative relationship of people to the land through ownership, use and displacement; the cultural heritage of landscape through language, place and memories; and our perceptions of beauty, nature and wildness. Rachel is past Chair Landscape Institute Scotland and co Chair of Scotland’s Landscape Alliance. Rachel's work has been included in, Poetry Scotland, Landscapes of the Mind – EU Landscape Decisions Programme, Off Page Many Studios exhibition,  Earthlines: Geopoetry and Geopoetics; Vernal Equinox, the Scottish Writers Centre 10 year anthology; Glasgow Review of Books;

Born in Cameroon to parents working in rainforest conservation, and given the local name ‘Mnkongmoteh’, MOTEH PARROTT is a Scottish alternative-indie-folk artist whose music has been likened to “a Highland wilderness with all the sweeping colour and spirit which that encompasses” (leedsmusicscene.net). His music compliments reflective, uplifting lyrics with open-tuned electric guitar and cello.

Shortlisted for BBC Radio Scotland’s Singer-Songwriter of the Year Award 2019, Moteh is preparing to release his debut album, which was recorded at Chem19 studios with Paul Savage, producer of Mogwai, Arab strap and King Creosote, among other renowned Scottish artists. The album features collaborations with Rachel Sermanni and trad musician Ryan Young.