Marina O'Connell is a successful grower, farmer, and educator. Born of seven generations of Dutch nurserymen from Boskoop in Holland, which is famous for fruit trees, she celebrates the professional women now pioneering the transition to resilient food production and to re-localizing the food economy.

O'Connell, the Apricot team, and her family have turned the bare land at Huxhams Cross Farm, Totnes, Devon, UK, from being "a miserable bit of land," as a local farm contractor called it in 2015, into a productive, beautiful, community-connected, and profitable farm.

She has action-researched the use of biodynamic, organic, permacultural, agroecological, regenerative, and agroforestry methods in her work. She leads by example. People from around the world visit her farm and join her courses and her Devon apprenticeship program for regenerative food systems She is consulted by farmers, who ask her to help redesign their farms away from industrial farming, and by farm estates needing help to make a successful transition to resilient food systems by 2030.