Regenerative farmers urge new thinking at Essex event

Writtle Farmers' Club hosted a gathering of farmers, professors, farm students and apprentices to discuss food security against a backdrop of growing environmental issues.

Speakers at the Writtle University College conference on Wednesday, February 7, were drawn from across the industry.

Among those proposing a regenerative regenerative approach were Grammy-nominated music star-turned-farmer Andy Cato, Josiah Meldrum, co-founder of British-grown pulses and beans brand Hodmedod - which is based near Halesworth - and farmers John and Joanna Cherry, hosts of Groundswell, a highly-regarded regenerative farming festival in Hertfordshire.

Suffolk food brand Hodmedod has gone from strength to strength, with retail sales up 40 to 50% year on year, and wholesale sales up by 30 to 40% - largely due to new customers.

It is now supplying national retailer Holland and Barrett with 13 products.

"We were quite nervous of working with Holland and Barrett as a much bigger retailer but I have to say they have really understood the challenges we face if we are going to offer them those more complicated products and have to build up the supply business with the kind of continuity you would otherwise expect," said Josiah.

"It's amazing. It's incredible, but among the farming community there's a real appetite for doing this but also the customers really get it in a way they didn't even five or six years ago."

He told delegates about a "failure of food systems" rather than a failure of farming which was causing a health timebomb. The UK had the lowest quality of life expectancy in Europe with diseases like type 2 diabetes being contracted by younger people. Biodiversity was suffering as a result of "reductive" cropping system. But there was no silver bullet or single answer to the "broken" food system, he said. 

Andy - one half of the electronic music duo Groove Armada and co-founder of regenerative farming group Wildfarmed - described his trial-and-error journey towards creating a viable regenerative farm in France.

His decision to buy a farm on what he later realised was degraded clay soil with no knowledge and understanding was a "ludicrous decision and insanely naive". But inspired by agroforestry experts and others he began to transform it.

This led to him being awarded the 2020 Laureate Nationale for innovation in agroecology and the Chevalier de l'Ordre du Merite Agricole. He later returned to England to become a tenant farmer for the National Trust and began to put his principles into practice there, as well as co-founding Wildfarmed.

"By bringing nature and food into the same field we can unlock other revenue streams so we can increase margins for farmers without increasing the price of food," he said.

Wildfarmed has created a community of like-minded farmers from Cumbria to Cornwall. "It struck me how few farmers have eaten food that they have grown," said Andy. But they sent sourdough recipes and got farmers baking using their own wheat and then selling bread to the public.

"It's really important we start viewing the arable landscape as not separate from nature," he said. "We are saying can you pay a bit more for this please because the farmers are doing something ridiculously different."

Few members of the public understood yet what regenerative agriculture was, but already some big names were getting on board and supporting the Wildfarmed brand - from retailer Marks and Spencer to Manchester City Football Club, he said.

Keynote speaker, Tim Lang, a former hill farmer and Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy, discussed food policy and how it serves the environment, health, social justice, and citizens.

“We’ve got to make farming the basic industry of Britain. If we don’t grow food what on earth are we doing? Britain has got a default assumption that other people will feed us, it was the Empire then it was Europe. It’s time we grew up and start growing our own food,” he said.

John and Joanna described how they were inspired by a trip to America and a no-till farming conference organised by Kansas farmers to set up their own back home. They were struck by the fact that they weren't operating in competition, but collaborating and helping one another.

"There's a fantastic good news story and farmers changing their field one field at a time, but the knock-on effect is far greater," said John.

"If it can happen at a landscape scale the improvements that happen from regenerative farming are extraordinary."

Joanna said the desire to evangelise once you got involved in regenerative methods was strong. "There's an in-built sense of competition that is, of course, part of the system," she said. "What's interesting in the DNA of this movement is it's collaborative and it's about sharing."

Farm student George Leonard of Home Farm Nacton in Ipswich helped to supply a younger person's perspective as he explained how his farm grew both organic and conventional vegetable crops.

George - who was not from a farming background - secured a farming apprenticeship at Home Farm Nacton and graduated with a regenerative agriculture degree from Writtle.

Among his studies was looking at how to create a regenerative potato crop. Working on the farm showed him how organic and conventional practices could be merged to create a "middle ground", he said.