Farm Gate

Day 3 of our 10 More Days of Groundswell series, which continues every day for 10 days.I meet Sally-Ann Spence down in the Groundswell fields as we sift through cowpats and discuss the role of entomology in archeology.

Day 2 of our 10 More Days of Groundswell series, which continues every day for 10 days.

This time:

Sam Beaumont (Gowbarrow Hall Farm) and Helen Browning (Soil Association) discuss the benefits of agroforestry - both as a commercial venture and for on-farm resilience.

This is the first of our impromptu in-the-field programmes, recorded at Groundswell 2026.

🪱 "We've got to tell the truth." That's the ethos behind of the new ⁠Centre for Dynamic Soils⁠ — a new farmer-led research venture co-founded by ⁠Andy Neal⁠, ⁠Andy Gray⁠ and ⁠Mel Bradley MBE⁠, backed by ⁠Yeo Valley Organic⁠, ⁠Wildfarmed⁠ and ⁠Waitrose & Partners⁠.

🎤 I spoke to the two Andys - We discuss soil structure, glyphosate, and why real farms beat university plots for soil science every day of the week.

Find out more here: https://www.centrefordynamicsoils.org/

It's that time again - it's Groundswell, the key festival of the UK regenerative farming year - an event that's now been running for 10 glorious years.

This is our essential guide to the festival's hot tickets.

So who's with me? It's only bloomin' Alex Cherry, the Director of Groundswell and of Lannock Farm - and Sally-Ann Spence is here - an entomologist and farmer and Britain's Got Talent winner... We've got the fantastic Annie Landless, the Farm Manager at Ampney Brook Farm - and I'm thrilled to be sharing a screen and a microphone with Thomas Slattery, the ADOPT Programme Lead...

ADOPT has very kindly agreed to sponsor not only this programme, but all of Farm Gate's content at Groundswell.

Martin Lines (Nature Friendly Farming Network), and ffinlo Costain (Farm Gate) discuss England's hot-off-the-press Farming Roadmap - what to make of Brexit 10-years on - what values Andy Burnham might bring to Number 10 - and the new UK/EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement.

They are joined by Alex Gray, a farming and environment lecturer on the Brooksby campus of Loughborough College, and ask how to get progressive farming better-embedded into college and university courses, and how to attract young people into agroecological farming practice.

#farming #AndyBurnham #policy #Agroecology #regenag #climatecrisis #foodsystem #naturalcapital

What could the future could look like for European pigs, egg laying hens, and broiler chickens?

ffinlo Costain (8point9.com) is joined by Dr Jenny Yngvesson from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, by Dr Catherine Pfeifer, lead researcher in the FiBL Switzerland Agri-Food Systems Group, and by Dr Lizzie Rowe, a farmer and researcher, and the founder of Leaf and Feather, an eco egg company based in the UK.

This is the fifth of our programmes investigating Pathways - a 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project that's been running since 2021.

ffinlo Costain talks to Dr Frédéric Leroy (Vrije University, Brussels) and Dr Jason Rowntree (Michigan State University).

Frédéric and Jason's new research paper argues that while livestock systems represent a considerable environmental challenge, anti-livestock and anti-meat perspectives over-simplify the issues, ignore regional variations, and rely on unbalanced carbon accounting.

They argue that carbon tunnel vision is a threat to good climate policy.

* Find out more and read the research at 8point9.com

What's the future of ruminant farm systems in Europe? What are the priorities for farmers, policy-makers and the public? Are they price, carbon emissions, carbon drawdown, animal welfare...?

In this programme, we're looking at pathways for ruminant agriculture: cattle, sheep, and goats, producing meat and dairy products.

ffinlo Costain is joined by Simon Moakes, a research fellow at Aberystwyth University in Wales - by Dr David Yáñez, a research professor at the Spanish National Research Council - and by Sara Hall, a PhD researcher working in the research team at Pasture for Life in the UK.

This is the fourth of our programmes investigating Pathways - a 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project that's been running since 2021.

The creation of bustling, thriving regional economies is an enormous opportunity to create food system resilience - and to bring wealth and wellbeing to rural areas.

To do this we need infrastructure - and we need the finance to support the rebuilding and the re-establishing of that infrastructure.

A new report from the Place Finance Lab addresses these issues.

ffinlo Costain is joined by the report authors and founding partners of the Place Finance Lab: Tamara Giltsoff and Matteo Vanzini, and by report contributor Matthew Thomson, a director of Sustainable Food Cornwall.

The Place Finance Lab has been incubated at Climate KIC, which has also supported this podcast - Climate KIC is Europe’s leading climate innovation agency and community, creating climate-resilient communities and fighting climate breakdown by mobilising systems change in countries, regions, cities, and businesses. Together with partners across the globe, Climate KIC orchestrates solutions and facilitates learning to bridge the gap between climate commitments and current reality, driving faster and more ambitious action.

ffinlo Costain is joined by Martin Lines (Chief Exec NFFN), Nic Renison from Renison's Farm, and by Jenna Hegarty, Head of Policy at Nature Friendly Farming Network.We find out what's happening at Papley Grove in June - we discuss farm business resilience in the face of climate change - Nic talks about her farm and what it's like living under the Helm Wind - and Jenna presents NFFN's new report, The Nature of Business: Delivering resilience, food security and economic value through nature-friendly farming.