Details of the speakers at the Growing Hope Together event being held at Kennaway House on Friday 9 October 2026 at 7:00pm.
Growing Hope Together: Reducing Farmland Pollution Entering Rivers – Andy Gray – Director of the Centre for Dynamic Soils
Andy Gray will provide examples of experimental practices on his mid-Devon Farm which reduce the pollution arriving in rivers.
Andy Gray runs his own meat business, dog food business, farm, quarry and is building abattoirs on islands. He is assisting in startups including organo-mineral fertiliser production, and growing building materials using cyanobacteria. Andy is a trustee of the Westcountry Rivers Trust, Chair of The River Taw Fisheries and Conservation Association, Chairman of the Devon County Agricultural Association and frequent speaker on sustainable agriculture and routes to markets both in person and through the media.
Growing Hope Together: Farmers Save More Lives Than Pharma – Dr Jenny Goodman
Join Jenny Goodman, doctor and author of Getting Healthy in Toxic Times, to hear her prescriptions for healing your body and the planet. Pesticides and synthetic fertilisers began as weapons of war, and as they travel from factory to soil to crops to food to people, they wreak havoc on all living cells. Jenny has seen the damage in her clinic, with diseases linked to these pollutants. But if dominant forms of medicine and agriculture have become wedded to the chemical industry, both also contain rebellious, visionary minorities determined to work with Nature, not against her. Jenny believes every farmer who transitions to organic methods is saving lives.
Dr. Jenny Goodman is a medical doctor, author, lecturer, and broadcaster. She trained in nutritional and environmental medicine with the British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM) after becoming disillusioned with conventional medicine’s lack of focus on preventing illness or addressing its root causes. Since 2000, she has practised Ecological Medicine, specialising in fertility, pre-conception care, and children’s health. She focuses on the impact of nutrition and environmental toxins on physical and mental wellbeing, helping patients improve their health through dietary changes, detoxification, and preventive care. A passionate advocate for environmental health, Jenny highlights the links between farming, pollution, food quality, and human health, encouraging a shift from “Pharma to Farmer.” Her books, include Getting Healthy in Toxic Times (2024).
Growing Hope Together: No Island Too Far – Dr Michael Brooke – University of Cambridge
Throughout a lifetime of biological and seabird research, Michael Brooke has been blessed with the opportunity to visit a huge array of islands dotted across all the oceans of the world. His is an island list fit to make the armchair traveller green with envy – and potentially seasick. Truly no island has been too far: from St Kilda to Spitsbergen, from Hawaii to the furthest reaches of the Southern Ocean, with all manner of destinations in between.
In his Sidmouth talk, Michael will share his experiences of stupendous scenery, amazing wildlife and cutting-edge scientific investigation, all blended with idiosyncratic adventures. We will learn about the peculiar ecology and unique species of islands, coupled lo a splash of history and anecdote. The day-to-day grind and exhilaration of undertaking fieldwork in remote situations is made possible by the curious mindset that enables equal pleasure to be extracted from, say, Sicilian architecture and the inexpressibly brown landscape of Cabo Verde.
After completing a seabird doctorate at Oxford while employed as warden of Skokholm Bird Observatory, Michael Brooke held research positions at Oxford and then Cambridge. He was then absorbed onto the staff of the Cambridge Zoology Department on a part-time basis. This position allowed him scope to travel to some of the world’s most wonderful places, including a 15-month sojourn in the Pitcairn Islands, and to undertake consultancy projects.
While serving as Curator of Birds in the Cambridge University Museum Zoology, Michael has continued to travel the world, mostly working at the interface of island conservation and seabird research. The latter has been treated in his acclaimed book “Far from Land”, published by Princeton University Press in 2018.