OGI Conference 2023

 

Our 2023 conference featured guest speakers Jan-Hendrik Cropp from Undercover Consultancy, Germany, Ashley Wheeler from Trill Farm Garden in Devon, UK and the legendary Jim Cronin. Read more

Conference Presentations

> Jan-Hendrik Cropp – Rotational No-Till & Mulching Systems
PDF slides: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
> Ashley Wheeler – Growing and adapting: Setting up an organic enterprise
> Jim Cronin – A fruitful and enjoyable life! Working efficiently as a market gardener
> Kitty Scully, OGI Network Coordinator
> Ger Hally, Intern, OGI Work Placement Programme 2022
> Brian McCarthy, Cork Rooftop Farm
> Closing address: Minister Pippa Hackett

Speaker Bios

Jan-Hendrik Cropp
Jan-Hendrik Cropp is a farmer pioneering organic no-till and minimal tillage systems, a consultant on soil fertility and a freelance journalist and speaker living in Germany. His passion is advancing organic no-till farming and mulchings systems for commercial-scale vegetable operations. He has co-run farms and vegetable operations on various scales and is a freelance consultant and speaker on soil health through his company under_cover GbR.

The soil health enhancing cropping systems he promotes are based on his own farming experiences, as well as his research and on-farm experiments as an organic agricultural scientist and agronomist. He also incorporates insights from extensive research trips throughout Europe and North America.

Ashley Wheeler
Ashley Wheeler is an organic vegetable grower and seed producer. He has run Trill Farm Garden, a 5-acre market garden in East Devon, with his partner Kate Norman since 2010. In 2021 they won the Young Organic Grower’s of the Year Award for their commitment to organic principles and how their good soil management and biodiversity has helped them deliver quality vegetable production despite a farm with a high water table and poor drainage.

They sell all of their produce to restaurants, cafes and shops within 10 miles of the farm and through a box scheme set up in 2020. Ashley grew up on an organic smallholding in Sussex and studied Horticulture at Reading University, specialising in historical garden restoration, but returned to vegetable growing a couple of years after graduating. He has a particular interest in soil health, producing seed, and plant diversity, and knowledge sharing through their traineeship and on farm courses.

Jim Cronin
One of Ireland’s leading horticulturalists, Jim Cronin is gradually winding down commercial production on a 16-acres organic market garden farm in Co. Clare where he has been adopting biological agriculture principles for the last 30 years without losing many of the traditional methods of farming.

Jim’s entire farming ethos is seamlessly entwined with nature conservation. Not only does he create a habitat for pollinators and wildlife but also for all the unseen worms and micro-organisms which are fundamental to growing crops and sustaining life above ground. Jim has both a small suckler herd and 2 working horses that both help work the land and provide essential manure for soil fertility.

Jim is both a teacher and a commercial grower of fruit and vegetables. Jim both combines the old traditions with new knowledge and methods based on sound principals as well as proves that one can make a good commercial yield from a small area without compromising nature.

 

Image Gallery

Some images from our 2023 OGI Conference.

Thanks to all who came along on the day, our exhibitors, the team at NOTS, the team at the Tullamore Court Hotel, and the Dept of Agriculture, Food & the Marine for their ongoing support.