Farm Gate

Whether a farmer wants to continue working exclusively to produce food, or plans to integrate natural capital income streams within their business, access to finance for investment may be needed.

We ask how farmers and other land managers can benefit from access to finance - what that finance might be used to fund - how to get it - and what strings might be attached?

ffinlo Costain speaks to - James Milne, the Regional Head of Barclays Agriculture in Central and Eastern England - and Emma Toovey, Chief Land and Nature Officer at Environment Bank.

This is the tenth episode in Farm Gate's Filling the Funding Gap series, sponsored by Barclays, Environment Bank, Forest Carbon, Howden Insurance, Regenerate and Saffery.

George Monbiot - the Guardian columnist with a penchant for lab-based protein and a farm-free future - recently wrote a scathing article damning two important livestock reports. The first was a report into three years of research into AMP grazing from FAI Farms, the Oxfordshire-based farm and food system consultancy - the second, Grazing Livestock, was by the Sustainable Food Trust.

ffinlo Costain talks to Karl Williams, a director of FAI, and Science and Technical Lead, Amanda Deakin - and to Patrick Holden, chief Executive of the Sustainable Food Trust, and Senior Research Manager, Robert Barbour.

Read the reports at 8point9.com:

FAI AMP report: https://8point9.com/emissions-completely-offset-by-sequestration-in-mcdonalds-fai-amp-grazing-project-2/

SFT Grazing Livestock report: https://8point9.com/new-report-aims-to-flip-the-script-on-meat-and-dairy/

It's a very long time since bears, wolves and lynx hunted freely across the Scottish landscape - but the reintroduction of these large carnivores has been a topic of noisy debate pretty much since I can remember. Today, we're asking whether Scotland can make room for the lynx.

Hugh Webster from Scotland: The Big Picture believes that integration is possible - while Cora Cooper, an Ayrshire sheep farmer, shares the concerns of many in her industry.

For more land use stories, please visit https://8point9.com/

In this programme we discuss ways in which tenant farmers can take advantage of natural capital income streams - as well addressing some of the barriers and challenges to market entry.

ffinlo Costain is joined by George Dunn, Chief Executive of the Tenant Farmers' Association - and by Lucy Jenner, a director at Savills, and Head of their Natural Capital Consultancy.

This is the ninth episode in our series: Filling the Funding Gap, in which we discuss how natural capital markets can help farmers transition towards resilient and regenerative food production.

Filling the Funding Gap is sponsored by Barclays, Environment Bank, Forest Carbon, Howden Insurance Brokers, Regenerate and Saffery.

ffinlo Costain (8point9.com) and Joe Stanley (GWCT Allerton Project) discuss:

The UK Government’s farm profitability review

The UK Nature Market Accelerator

The importance of historic maps

Restoring farmland in Ukraine

And a report by anonymous whistleblowers, calling for investor and creditor action to address the nature crisis.

8point9 editor, ffinlo Costain, is joined by Tim Coates, a co-founder of Oxbury Bank, which launched in 2021 as the only UK bank dedicated exclusively to the rural economy.

In Farm Gate Leaders, ffinlo talks to someone who's played a defining role in our food and farming system - someone who's helping to deliver lasting and progressive change.

In Ukraine, explosive munitions have contaminated the soil with chemicals and heavy metals - hundreds of thousands of hectares will have to be surveyed and demined - and countless craters will have to be refilled.

We consider the cost of restoring Ukraine's agricultural soils.

ffinlo Costain is joined by Professor Wilfred Dolfsma from Wageningen, who recently led a study into the economics of Ukrainian soil recovery - and by Nick Padwick from Wild Ken Hill.

Read more on 8point9: https://8point9.com/cost-of-repairing-ukraines-war-ravaged-soils-could-be-20-billion/

More information about the research here

We're investigating how farmers and land managers can create income streams from restoring peatland.

Why is peatland important? What's the difference between upland and lowland peatland markets? How can farmers fund projects and sell credits? And what's the role of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme?

I'm joined by Andy Howard, Chief Executive of CSX Carbon - and Sam Welsh, Head of Sales and Marketing at Forest Carbon.

This is the eighth episode in our series: Filling the Funding Gap, in which we discuss how natural capital markets can help farmers transition towards resilient and regenerative food production.

Filling the Funding Gap is sponsored by Barclays, Environment Bank, Forest Carbon, Howden Insurance, Regenerate and Saffery. Farm Gate is part of 8point9.com - the land use news channel.

In this programme, 8point9.com's ffinlo Costain investigates how farmers and other land stewards can earn money from creating and managing woodland.

ffinlo is joined by George Hepburne-Scott, Director, Forest Carbon - by David Robertson, Director of Investment and Business Development, Scottish Woodlands - by David McCulloch, Head of CarbonStore, Tilhill - and by Mark Lee, who farms at Torpenhow Farm in Cumbria.

They discuss woodland carbon credits, additionality, biodiversity, nature credits, timber production and input savings resulting from woodland integration.

This is the seventh episode in Farm Gate's Filling the Funding Gap series, sponsored by Barclays, Environment Bank, Forest Carbon, Howden Insurance, Regenerate and Saffery.

You can find more in this series in your feed, or by visiting https://8point9.com/farm-gate/

⁠8point9.com⁠⁠⁠ editor, ffinlo Costain, is joined by farmer and columnist, Joe Stanley - they discuss the abrupt closure of SFI24, the Sustainable Farming Scheme, and what that means for farmers and the countryside - they look at Paying The Price, a report by the Food Farming & Countryside Commission into UK diets - and they talk about the opportunity to stack natural capital services with food production.

(Views expressed in the podcast by Joe and ffinlo do not necessarily represent the views of their respective companies and organisations.)