This is a copy of the Green Farm Collective newsletter from May 2023. To join the mailing list, please email [email protected]. To access the full range of member benefits, including exclusive articles and recordings, sign up at gfp.global.

Green Farm Collective enewsletter

Welcome to our first Green Farm Collective enewsletter. At the core of the Green Farm Collective is sharing what we are learning as we explore a more regenerative approach to farming and to encourage farmers from all corners of the UK to adopt more sustainable methods into their systems, on whatever scale.

Sometimes the next step is the hardest, but we’ve been there, done it and are always happy to share our insights and what (not!) to do.

We launched our membership earlier this year and are delighted to welcome our first farmer and corporate members. Through our exclusive members-only newsletter, we’ll keep you up to date with what we are doing, where we are seeing a difference and what’s coming down the line that will help us all to be on the front foot.

Our newsletters will feature some more in-depth focus on our six GFC farmers, Q&As with leaders in the industry and discussion around hot topics. Each issue will also include top tips, whether technical – for example, how to brew your own biology to fight septoria - or advisory, such as how to convince the boss to try something new. Even if you are not farming, we hope you’ll find what we are doing, and why, interesting.

We look forward to sharing ideas and growing together with our environment as a wider collective to boost our natural assets and our farms as well as to produce nutrient-rich food from healthy soils for all to enjoy.

Read on to find out more about farm developments with Michael and Jake, a podcast interview with Tim by nutrition expert Patrick Holford and home brewing on the farm with a fish tank bubbler.

If you have any feedback or ideas, please get in touch. 

Find out more on our website, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. 

Regenerative Agriculture Conference 

Come to our Members Open Day on 24 May to give you a chance to see and hear first-hand what the Green Farm Collective is doing, as well as hear from 19 different speakers across 2 seminar halls. Lunch is included, and there will be a raffle giving away prizes such as cover crop seed, Groundswell tickets and crucially, beer! Our corporate sponsors will also be exhibiting on the day, and host farmer Michael Kavanagh will have biodiversity packages available to see and buy on the day. Camping is also available. Find out more. 

Starting over with what I know now

When he started as Farm Manager at the 600-acre Church Farm eight years ago, Michael Kavanagh, a first-generation farmer, had to find a way to run it single-handedly. It was looking at how to do this that initially took him down the regenerative farming route. Now as he starts over again with a recent expansion of 800 acres of land which has been conventionally farmed to date, find out how he plans to restore and regenerate it from what he learned first time around. Read more. 

Barn owl chicks put spotlight on wise moves

Prolific birdlife is a sign that the soil, biodiversity and general environment is in good heart. Newborn barn owl chicks in a nest on one of the GFC farms last year was not only a very special sight but true validation of the work that has gone into restoring the farm’s natural assets.

Three of our GFC farms have been approached to run bird ringing projects to gather the data beyond the anecdotal, and the results say it all. By attaching and monitoring with small metal number rings, it gathers information on the productivity, survival and movement of birds and we are really proud that the project leaders cannot believe the numbers. Read more. 

Q&A with Jake Freestone

It was when he was doing a Nuffield Scholarship on breaking the wheat yield plateau that Jake learned something critical that wasn’t what he’d set out to discover. Ten years on, and now one of the best-known spokespeople in the UK on farming to enhance biology and wildlife, he has developed Overbury Farms to farm in a very different and productive way. Find out what he’s focusing on now, experimenting with planting tenderstem broccoli after cover crops and what bugs him. Read more. 

Brewing up biology 

When you are putting soils first, it makes you rethink everything. One of the greatest success stories of our group are the biological brews we make on farm, inspired by GFC farmer and the grandfather of UK regen ag, Tim Parton, to mitigate disease, including septoria, fusarium, bunt and smut. Not only does it reduce chemical inputs, but each treatment costs £1.50/ha applied saving substantial sums of money. Read more. 

Tune In

Tim Parton talks nutrition for both soil and human health with globally renowned nutrition expert Patrick Holford (listen here), who will also be speaking at our Open Day in May. For three more interviews on regenerative farming Tim click here.

Read of the month

Gabe Brown’s book ‘Dirt to Soil’

“It’s a right of passage to start with this.” Jake Freestone

We are starting to build a Knowledge Bank on our website to share technical information on how to make money and clean up the planet at the same time. We want to inform and inspire you with new ideas from what we are learning along the way. If there’s anything you’d like to know more about, send us an email and we’ll get it in the Knowledge Bank.

All our members have access to Trinity Pioneers which is a private forum where ideas can be shared along with pictures and videos. Become a member. 

If you have feedback or ideas of what you might like to hear more about in the newsletter, please email us.