In the third and final episode of our 2026 summer series, Farmerama speaks to two farmers currently working on ADOPT-funded projects: Emma Loder-Symons of Nonington Farms in Kent on the two-year Mill-It project to grow millet for human consumption, addressing harvesting without glyphosate and highlighting millet’s drought resilience and low-cost potential; and Bryony Graham, a fourth-generation arable farmer on the Essex/Hertfordshire border, on short rotation coppice willow for biomass and an ADOPT-funded trial to make clean, peat-free compost at commercial scale, alongside wider benefits for carbon capture and habitat. Find out more about all the ADOPT funded projects here: https://farmpep.net/adopt/live-projects
We also head to Sierra Leone to hear from Mabutu Samai and farm manager Lahai Makie about Farming on Crutches, training amputees in agroecology and bokashi production while seeking funding to expand. Find out how to support their work here: https://farmingoncrutches.org/donate
Geetie Singh-Watson and Philippa Hughes share details of their brand new Level 3 regenerative hospitality course, launching this month as a partnership between The Bull Inn in Totnes, Farmacy and the Apricot Centre. Find out more here: https://farmacylondon.com/pages/education
And finally the ORFC Farm Practice Advisor Andy Dibben previews the diverse, practical programme of the 2027 Oxford Real Farming Conference. Tickets are on sale now: https://orfc.org.uk/event/oxford-real-farming-conference-2027/
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The soundmap traces how Cereal has shaped thinking, practice, and connection across grain and food systems, and what actions people are taking today – from Scotland to Australia.
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Transcript:
Episode 95
LUCY: Hello and welcome to Farmerama. This is the third and final episode in our summer series. This month we hear from two farmers in the midst of projects funded by ADOPT – growing millet and willow, respectively. We travel to Sierra Leone to hear about the work of farmer Mambud Samai and the organisation he started: Farming on Crutches, and we learn about an exciting new course applying the principles of regenerative farming to hospitality work. Finally, tickets are now on sale for the the Oxford Real Farming Conference – we’ve got a short preview of what you can expect from the farming programme for 2027
ROSIE: The ADOPT Grant is part of DEFRA’s Farming Innovation programme for farmers, growers and foresters in England to run collaborative, on-farm trials. ADOPT projects can have total costs of between £50,000 and £200,000 pounds and run for six to 24 months. The grant requires farmers to work with at least one other farmer within the UK, as well as a facilitator (and there is a separate grant available to fund facilitator costs). There are multiple funding rounds coming up and free support is available through The ADOPT Support Hub, which we will link to in our show notes.
Our next two stories are from farmers who applied successfully for the funding and are using it to trial exciting crops. We saw Emma Loder-Symons speak on a panel at Groundswell this year – and along with other panelists she had 8 minutes to ‘sell’ her Novel Use Crop idea, in this case millet, which she is growing and harvesting for human consumption. Here’s Emma to explain a bit more about the ADOPT-funded Mill-It project.
[00:01:15] Emma: I’m Emma Loder-Symons. I’m one of the directors and co-owners of Nonington Farms, which is a farm down in Kent. We have, recently transitioned to a much smaller scale form of agriculture, in no small part through inspirational talks from the Cereals program on Farmerama, so now we run our own stone ground mill, and all of the produce that we grow on the farm, well, all of the cereals we will mill and turn into flour.
[00:01:44] The Mill-It project came about a little bit over a year ago now when one of our clients whom we were selling flour to was a restaurant in Canterbury. And it’s run by a chap who’s the chef, head chef there, who’s called Dev Biswal, who is originally from India. And we were chatting over a bag of flour delivery, and he said, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever grown millet before, have you?”
[00:02:11] And I said, “Yeah, we, we grow millet,” because, um, about, about 20% or so of our farm is put down to various different stewardship options, and one of those, or actually plenty of them, are, or actually plenty of them, are, um, wild bird food. In order to make sure that there is food for the birds and pollinators throughout the year, not just at sort of set times of the, of the growing year. So I said, “Yeah, we do grow millet, but we’ve never thought about eating it.” And he said, um, “In “In India, and indeed in other parts of the world China, in fact pretty much everywhere else in the world, it’s a, a staple food, and, um, what about it? Why don’t we grow it and eat it?” That’s, I suppose, planted the seed. I think I’m right in saying that in the UK there’s about 9,000 tons of millet grown, of which all of it goes to the birdseed market or pretty much all of it.
[00:03:07] And we still import 35,000 tons worth of millet for more birdseed. So the Great British bird table is full of millet and yet in pretty much every other country in the world they eat millet, so not just for the birds.
[00:03:23] And I said, “Well, w- we should think about this.
[00:03:25] This is a good thing.” And he’s not one to just sort of put it on the back burner. So the next, the next thing I knew, he said, ” what about if we do actually try and do this and we get funding for it to try it out? What about getting an ADOPT funding project up and running?”
[00:03:43] And we both looked into it, and obviously that is farmer-led so I was the farmer. The project started in December and it’s a two-year project.
[00:03:54] we’ve got a couple of other farmers involved who, one of whom has grown millet lots and grows it for Soil UK who then mainly use it for birdseed.
[00:04:07] The other people involved are NIAB, who will then take the product that we’ve harvested and will play around with it scientifically because one of the things that you have when you’ve got the whole seed is it’s got this husk on the outside which is slightly unpalatable to humans, and they’re gonna play around with things like fermenting it and seeing whether that would- reduce the amount of phytic acid which is the unpalatable bit, enzyme that goes into the gut.
[00:04:35] And then assuming we’ve done all of that, then Dev comes in at the end if you like in terms of promoting millet as a really good food for all of us to eat. And recipes and that sort of thing. But also we’ll be growing it again and hopefully taking on more farmers to prove that it’s actually a really good break crop and that more farmers should be growing it.
[00:04:57] We knew that we were able to grow it because it grows perfectly well in all the bird covers. However, growing it as a commercial crop we didn’t know about. And the biggest issue that we have is working out how to cut it without using glyphosate. Because using glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant is not ideal in any situation, but when it’s predominantly used in this country it’s for wheat.
[00:05:27] And theoretically you spray it, desiccate it, and then about two, three weeks later you can harvest it the theory, whether you believe it or not, the theory is that the minimum residue levels in wheat at that point are within a safe parameters. With millet, that’s not the case, and it’s 10 times higher.
[00:05:47] So basically what that all means is you can’t spray glyphosate with a pre-harvest desiccant.
[00:05:54] The way that you do that is by swathing it, which is effectively cutting it a bit like you would for grass, let’s say. So you cut it and you let it dry out.
[00:06:05] And then you go through with the combine maybe a week later and you harvest it that way. Our millet project through the Adopt funding was supposed to look at swathing as a form of harvesting the crop. Obviously, that was before we had a really dry summer and everything motored at a much quicker speed.
[00:06:27] And so therefore what happened was we’ve now, at the moment, now taken a decision not to do the swathing this year because it’s not gonna be effective.
[00:06:37] However, what has been really interesting is we did this project, we said, “Okay, we’ll grow millet,” for all the reasons that I said in terms of having a healthy food, alternative source of protein, gluten-free, all of these kind of things.
[00:06:52] But in the intervening months that’s happened, we’ve had potentially a ban on glyphosate is definitely looming, so suddenly all the let’s say conventional farmers who are not interested in growing anything other than wheat and maybe rape, are suddenly thinking, “Oh, crumbs, if we don’t have glyphosate, we’re gonna need to know how to cut it without using it.”
[00:07:16] Something like rape you might well use swathing. So suddenly it’s become a much more interesting topic of conversation. So the local farmers and stuff are now looking at it and thinking, “Ooh, if you’re gonna be testing out swathing, I need to know the results of that.
[00:07:31] I need to know how effective it is,” and so on. It’s gathered a lot more interest than it would otherwise have done. Equally, as I’ve said, we’ve had a rather large drought, especially in the southeast, where it hasn’t rained since June and up until when the crop naturally was senescing, it looked fantastic, and everywhere else was brown and dying, and this millet field was just looking amazing.
[00:07:57] Really green, really healthy. So it’s proving a, a different point as well, which is that it’s very drought resilient, and I think that’s really exciting for the future as well.
[00:08:07] I think the next step would be to see where it goes, obviously in the next… This year and next year, harvest years. But also see how far north you can grow it. See if there are different varieties that you can grow. And as our climate changes can our cropping system keep up with that?
[00:08:26] Can we change the the sort of population’s thinking around some of these alternative grains? Millet flour is very versatile. And whilst you might not bake bread with it 100% you could always add it in. You can make beer with it. You can make biscuits with it.
[00:08:45] You can make spaghetti with it. Is there potential there for huge change in consumption? Because growing millet is a very cheap crop to grow.
[00:08:55] And I mean cheap in terms of the economics of it because you only plant it in May and it’s ready in September, which leaves you plenty of time to do other things within the soil. So for example, cover crop, grazing that, getting livestock on the land huge amounts of diversity. But it’s also carbon footprint. is Very low, so it’s cheap in that respect as well, and I think these are really important elements to what we’re eating and should all be taken into consideration, and inevitably aren’t in a cheap food system.
LUCY: After we spoke to Emma we were pleased to hear via the Nonington Farms instagram that the 2026 millet harvest was a success – proving that they didn’t need to use glyphosate to dessicate it. They’re now moving on to drying, cleaning and eating it and seeing how well the ground is prepared for the wheat growing on it next and so proving its worth as a break crop.
We also caught up with Bryony Graham at Lodge Farm in Essex, who is also running an ADOPT funded project making peat-free compost from Willow, with the goal of selling it into the commercial horticulture sector.
[00:09:28] Bryony: My name is Bryony Graham and I am a fourth-generation arable farmer on the Essex/Hertfordshire We have farmed here since 1924, and despite my father’s best efforts to persuade myself and my brother that agriculture was not the future for us, we came back to the farming business, having done other things, about 10 years ago.
[00:09:50] So we’re really deeply passionate about sustainable food production at scale. We farm about 300 hectares, which isn’t an enormous unit, but it’s enough to, be trading on the commodities level, and I think it’s really deeply important that we look at farming in a way that we see that environmental goals and food production are not mutually exclusive, and that we can do these things together in a way that really impacts food production on a big scale
[00:10:30] so we started to grow short rotation coppice four years ago now. And that was in response to the development of some of our buildings into a wedding and events venue to diversify our income stream and effectively ensure that the farming side of the business remained viable in what was quite a challenging climate.
[00:10:50] We’ve always wanted to have as much renewable energy on the farm as we can, and we had a biomass boiler installed in 2017 with a view to eventually growing our own fuel for it. So several years later, we eventually got round to doing that and working with some really great people, like Kevin Lingard and Jamie Rickaby we planted 18 hectares of short rotation coppice willow over a three-year period from 2022 to 2025.
[00:11:17] What we have found is that the willow is the most remarkably drought resilient crop. It’s the only thing this summer in 2026 which remained green from June to September. It finds moisture. And it got us thinking that if you think about food production globally with the changing climate,
[00:11:36] You know, our area of the UK in the southeast, which has traditionally been quite cereals dominated, you know, maybe that’s not the right thing anymore.
[00:11:44] And just watching the way the willow responds to these changes is just remarkable and the first field we coppiced in December 2025 is now two meters tall in September 2026, having had loads of rain January to March and then nothing from then.
[00:11:59] We’ve literally had about 50 mil in that time. How we use that willow, it is remarkable in terms of carbon capture, so it’s one of the highest carbon capture crops there is in terms of the amount of carbon it pulls in, atmospheric carbon it sequesters during its lifetime. You plant the trees as rods, and they have a lifespan as a crop for about 20 to 30 years. then the use of that crop is so wide-ranging. It can be fodder, it can be bedding. We have currently got some trials ongoing to make peat-free compost from it to selling to the commercial horticulture sector. There’s potential for that to be a compost that could be returned to the land in an arable setting.
[00:12:37] The components of that compost could be used to help control grass weeds in arable situations in a whole crop way. The potential of it is absolutely vast. And then the environmental benefits are huge in terms of the habitat. We’ve seen hare populations skyrocket with the willow on the farm.
[00:12:53] I think the key thing about it is, yes, willow is a tree, but it is a crop. It’s not forestry because those trees have a 20, 30-year life cycle.
[00:13:02] You could then return that land to food production.
[00:13:04] So in terms of the projects and the trials we currently have ongoing on the farm with regard to producing peat-free compost from the willow chip we were first made aware of the ADOPT funding via um, the consultants we were working with to plant the willow in the first place.
[00:13:20] So our project was funded under round one of the ADOPT scheme, and it’s an 18-month project to trial different ratios of carbon and nitrogen as part of the compost mix.
[00:13:32] We did a great event in June where lots of people came from all different sort of aspects of commercial horticulture or commercial compost production or experts in soil microbiology, and seems that there is a really, really key need for, A, commercial scale replacement for peat-based compost obviously in the commercial horticulture sector, but also to have a clean product where you know what went into it.
[00:14:00] It’s not a compost made from green waste, which is inherently variable, or food waste, which has problems with pathogens potentially.
[00:14:07] And so I think there’s huge potential for this and it feels like a really positive way to use what could otherwise be viewed as unproductive and challenging land in a way that still feeds into the food production system and creates a more resilient circular system UK agriculture.
[00:15:12] I think if any farmers are listening, there’s a kind of often a natural, “Oh, not another funding system, not another set of paperwork,” and that is a very natural response to these. If I’m honest, it feels like they’re hauled at us every six months. It’s all new every time.
[00:15:26] “Oh, here’s a new one. What does that mean? How much is it gonna give me?” And it’s kind of fatigue almost from how many changes there have been to the funding that’s available to farmers. However, and I, I genuinely mean this, I think ADOPT is one of the best set-up schemes.
[00:15:42] There’s some really, really good, really tangible projects already funded under ADOPT-
[00:15:48] there’s an amazing one on relay cropping. There’s some really good ones on crop nutrition that basically take the risk out from a farmer’s perspective and say, “Well, I’ve always wondered if I could put 50% less nitrogen on a crop following a legume fallow or following pulses, but I can’t really afford to take that gamble because I can’t take the hit on the yield.
[00:16:08] But actually, if I’m being paid 200K by ADOPT, then I can. I can afford to take that risk. That could be systemically game-changing from an industry perspective. And you wanna see a farmer do it. You want to see it done not on a plot trial. You want to see it done at field scale in the real world with real climatic conditions, and I think there is so much that adopt could do with big questions like that, that all of us would love to know the answer to, but we just can’t afford to take the risk to ask.
ROSIE: You can find out more about Bryony and Emma’s projects, among hundreds of other live projects on the ADOPT Support Hub website, alongside a range of resources for getting started on your ADOPT idea.
LUCY: Next we travel to Sierra Leone, where Mambud Samai shares updates from the Farming on Crutches team, alongside farm manager Lahai. Farming on crutches was set up to help those who have lost a limb in Sierra Leone’s civil war to train in agroecological farming, and to gain skills and financial independence.
[00:17:17] Mambud: I am Mambud Samai, project manager for Farming on Crutches. We started it with amputee football because, um, about, uh, twelve thousand people lost limbs during the war, and, uh, they have no hope. And so we started with, uh, football activities. Then we realized that, uh, most of them couldn’t, um, didn’t have the opportunity to education, formal education but then they can also be employed into society.
[00:17:46] And one of those ways was to go into farming. So, we seek sponsorship to Japan where they have a, this Asia Institute, ARI in Japan. And so we seek sponsorship, and I, I happen to go there for one year. So when we return, I return in twenty eighteen, we now have this opportunity to set up Farming on Crutches.
[00:18:11] We have privilege to have to sit on a three acres of land, which was, uh, funded by Ban Ki-moon, you know, the then Secretary General of United Nations. He visited Sierra Leone, and we did spot demonstration, and so He gave us a generous donation where we were able to secure this, uh, strategic, uh, land, very close to Freetown.
[00:18:35] And now we are farming here, with, uh, you know, three hundred and fifty amputees across the country coming to stay on the farm, you know, for one week and then go back with, uh, seeds, money to set up their own farming.
[00:18:49] We are doing agroecology, regenerative practices. Because, uh, the problem in Sierra Leone is the use of chemical fertilizer that, uh, most farmers, smallholder farmers are now using.
[00:19:01] But then it limits us into poverty, but then the environment becomes very difficult with climate change, and then the food becomes toxic for us. So we are practicing agroecology, so that, uh, we can change the mindset of our farmers, not only, you know, the food system, but, uh, how we can also change the mindset of farmers across the country to engage into best practices, farming practices in the country
[00:19:25] We farm in harmony with nature. And so what we do is, uh, introduce them to our compost making, organic fertilizer preparations, which we call bokashi.
[00:19:35] Bokashi is gathering all the local materials without any input, external input. Uh, If I saw you come to our farm here, we have chicken, where we just grow chicken for the manure. You know, we need the chicken dung to produce the bokashi fertilizer.
[00:19:50] We mix with rice meal. We go to the forest and then get, uh, indigenous microorganisms. We mixed all those ingredients for 14 days. We reduce the temperature to 52 degrees Celsius. So when the guys come, men and women come to our farm here for one week, so they are learning all this every day so that they can return home and, um, uh, practice what we are doing.
[00:21:01] My name is Lahai Makie. I’m amputee by person and, uh, I the farm manager. I play football. We started there initially, so we are now– I’m now a manager, so I stay in the farm. I do the farm work, teach others how to apply organic farmings. So that is my role I’m doing presently
[00:21:24] No, I enjoy, uh, Number one, I enjoy the, I love the nature. I, I love the type of crops we are planting, That is some of the system I love so much because I already been taught that the chemical fertilizer or chemical fruit is harming people, destroying our nations. So the mere fact I already learn how to grow organic fruit, organic produce, I love that, and that makes me totally, entirely belongs into the farm.
[00:21:55] so right now as we see, we have, uh, eight farmer, eight workers now on the field. We are working on our poultry project. We are working on our, on the multi-layer farming.
[00:22:53] We are taking a very big, uh, campaign this year from now to December, we call it, uh, Bokashi Hub. Where, , people can come and learn about, uh, organic, uh, production. We want to make sure we communicate to smallholder farmers across the country, to say there is an alternative interest, you know, in this, uh, chemical input that people are doing.
[00:23:16] So there is here, uh, a technology that we have proven for five years, and then they can now come and see our crops. They can come and taste our cucumbers, uh, pepper, you know, our vegetables, and then they compare, you know, the chemical input we are buying in the market every day. So this is the work that we are doing now, a big campaign, and we want to produce five thousand tons. Of, uh, bokashi so that, uh, we can make this available to farmers.
[00:23:48] We have educational materials, but, uh, video in Creole, which is, uh, widely spoken to all for commercial reasons. So we make a video in Creole, and then we will have our, training materials that, uh, we can show them how this process is carried out so that farmers can go and try.
[00:24:06] We are looking out for funding. We are looking out for funding. The moment we have funding, we, we organize training.
[00:24:14] The only thing I want to share, I want you to spread those messages across the, the, the, your country and the world at large, and let people… We need support. We are looking out for support. We train more people to able to change our environment, to change our nature, to make sure that people used to green nature, let people know that organic farming is good.
[00:24:37] Oh, that is our dreams. That is our dream and that is our aim. No, we don’t want to limit, uh, this training within amputees. We want to spread it across the world and the country at large. Train other people that are not amputees. You know, we have to preach this message to people that organics farming is good for our health, for our living.
[00:25:00] But we can’t do that by ourselves without money, without support. So we are looking out for support. So please, please, people have been, who have been listening to us now, we are looking out for support. Please, let them help us. We need support to teach other people, to teach people more about organic farming.
[00:25:08] That is my message out there
ROSIE: You can support their efforts to train amputees in nature-friendly farming by making a donation via the Farming on Crutches website, which is in the show notes. A £20 pound donation can provide seeds for the programme, or you can fund one day of the training course for £55, or sponsor an amputee through the whole training course for £400.
[00:25:23]
LUCY: This month, a Level 3 Qualification in Regenerative and Sustainable Hospitality is launching – the first of its kind in the UK. It’s been organised by Farmacy, in partnership with the Apricot Centre and the Bull Inn in Totes. It’s aimed at the next generation of hospitality leaders, seeking to provide them with the skills and knowledge they need to implement regenerative practices through their operations and do business in a way that is environmentally and socially just.
The course aims to join up some of the separation between urban and rural communities which often results in regenerative agriculture being seen as a countryside pursuit, when in fact cities can also be places of great ecological regeneration. Hospitality provides vast opportunities to connect those who live in towns and cities to the land and to each other.
We met Geetie Singh-Watson and Philippa Hughes to find out a bit more about the ethos behind the course. They’re overseeing the course structure – and also both teaching on it – under an umbrella of businesses which includes Riverford, run by Geetie’s husband Guy Singh-Watson.
[00:25:41] I’m Geetie Singh-Watson. Right now I’m sitting by the sea. It’s so gorgeous in Devon, and it’s heavenly. We live in Devon. We have a 13-bedroom hotel and restaurant and pizza shop, 150-acre farm where we collectively farm with a group of other independent businesses, and then we have this incredible level three regenerative hospitality course.
[00:26:06] So that’s what we’re really doing.
[00:26:07] Phill: Hi, I’m Philippa Hughes. , I’m the managing director of all the businesses. So we’ve got the Bull Inn in Totnes, The Albatross. We’ve got Noble Learning, which is obviously what we’re here to talk about today, and we’ve got Riverford Farm Collective.
[00:26:41] Geetie: In some ways we’re demonstrating a, a whole economic system, and we’re not just trading amongst ourselves. We trade with the immediate community.
[00:26:49] I mean, we spend 500,000 a year, 15 miles direct to growers and producers, and that doesn’t include Riverford ’cause they’re a bit complicated. The kind of impact that we’re having locally is brilliant. But how you tell that story, the, the complex story of these multiple businesses all trading with each other and all really supporting each other….
[00:27:09] Phill: when myself and Geetie started working together, one of the things that impressed me about her straight away was how she wanted to embrace the complexity.
[00:27:19] In most hospitality businesses, you’re aiming for efficiency without complexity, right? You want that as straight and as easy as possible. And I think because of Geetie’s background, which she can speak to later, living, working, breathing in a commune, she embraces complexity and, and knows and can see the benefits.
[00:27:39] Geetie: Actually the reality is organic farming is, or regenerative farming, but m- even more so organic farming, is deeply embracing complexity.
[00:27:48] What’s happened within farming is that we’ve lost the skill set that can deal with complexity. In the same way in kitchens we lost a lot of the skill set that can deal with seasonality. I’ve got to adjust the menu today because the frost has destroyed what I was expecting to come in.
[00:28:05] And so chefs have to be so much more highly skilled.
[00:28:09] And then Phil and I are deeply neurodiverse. I mean, we learned this. We’ve been on this journey together, so we’re both a… Both of us are insanely complex.
[00:28:16] And then Guy’s got ADHD, and he’s autistic. I mean, we had a hilarious meeting on Monday where it was like ADHD clashing with autism on how we dealt with the situation. And we were literally sitting there going, we all love complexity in our businesses, so we’ve got to love the complexities within this relationship, and we can make it- work, but you have to kind of drive through it.
[00:28:36] When I first opened my first pub in 1998, one of the key things was in recruiting professional caterers rather than people who bought into my ethos, ’cause most caterers didn’t understand the ethos I was talking about.
[00:28:50] It was very radical. For example, we had no mixers on the bar because I couldn’t find a mixer that was ethical. So you couldn’t get gin and tonic. You had to have a gin and plum juice from a nice ethical supplier. There was no Coke. There were no known beer brands. So the idea was that I had really professional staff who knew how to sell this concept, and my job was to train them in the ethos, ethics, environmental, and societal impact that business can have.
[00:29:18] But first and foremost, you have to be a brilliant restaurant, pub, hotel, first and foremost, and then underlying it are values. Because people will go away and just gripe about you if you’re, if you’re a bit ethical and also a bit of shit.
[00:29:33] It’s a bit like being a woman or being brown. You’ve just got to be a bit better.
[00:29:37] So one of the main things that’s happening with the people on the course is they, they say they’ve found their community, that they feel so lonely out there, and they create little groups and, you know, start communicating and supporting each other, which is really amazing.
[00:29:50] I grew up in a commune. I was indoctrinated in this. It was absolutely my upbringing. I was taught, indoctrinated in critical thinking, in challenging how society is operating, proving you can do it better, but doing it with real competency and not doing it in, in a half-arse hippy way.
[00:30:07] It’s got to be really competent. And, What I think happens for a lot of these businesses is I know a lot of these businesses that are deeply ethical and doing all this stuff, they don’t know how to tell their story.
[00:30:19] They don’t know how valuable their story is. And actually it is also about teaching people that how you spend your money can seriously change society.
[00:30:39] You can’t watch porn. You know, we do all sorts of blocking of stuff that we think is utterly immoral, and so it’s not happening. You cannot come to our hotel and watch porn. I bloody love that. But there is some erotic literature in your room if you want it.
[00:30:54] People come to a hotel to have a weekend off, to supper out with their mates. So to then arrive in a place where you’re then lectured about environmentalism and societal collapses a very tricky balance.
[00:31:07] So we try and do it as joyfully as we can, and that’s what we’re trying to also help all these other businesses do, is say to them, “Okay, so here’s your basic framework to help you think through supply chain, to think through employment, to think through what your bottom line’s doing, but here’s how you tell that story, and here’s how you motivate people to come along with you,
[00:31:28] Phill: so when I, I was looking for where I could send my team off to teach and learn, I keep on just going, “We’re doing it better in-house. We’re doing it better in-house.” So to, for it all to be packaged up- And with the storytelling, so here’s your HR, here’s your money, here’s your resource management, and then here’s how you tell your story in a truthful way that will resonate with your people, was a huge relief for people to find something like that.
[00:31:55] That was really interesting for us, that reaction, like, “Oh my God, it… This is what we’ve been looking for.”
[00:32:01] When we were building the course, we had to define what regenerative hospitality meant to us. And we know lots of regenerative farmers who are just the absolute dogs’ bananas. Um- As in good. As in good, yeah. And then you’ve got people who are using it as a tool for greenwash, right? So one of the things we come out of the gate with when we start the course is we define what regenerative means to us, and we really are focusing, because we already…
[00:32:29] Organic farming to us is already regenerative. For us it’s about leaving somewhere better than you found it. So that looks at your economy, your society, your community, your environment.
[00:32:43] So that’s how we define it.
[00:32:44] The climate catastrophe that we’re, we are in, this is the time when we really need local short supply chains.
[00:32:53] So there’s an opportunity here to look after our communities via, with hospitality. Hospitality has a key position in this. Unlike retail, in-person socializing cannot be put online, and we need that social capital and that social coherence. It can operate a very parallel position in helping to demonstrate how these short supply chains run, and the fact that you don’t have to sacrifice anything, as in the quality of your life.
[00:33:28] If anything, it will become a better quality and more coherent and congruent way of living.
[00:33:34] I would say as well that one of the key parts of this is how we have interwoven the practical and operational with the philosophical because
[00:33:49] we are caterers. DT, me, we started changing bowels, mopping floors. We know it all the way through, and one of the things that people would ask us is, you know, “What do I do with my bins?” you’re like, “Yeah, bins. Let’s sort bins.” But then you wanna be inspired, and you wanna have hope, right?
[00:34:09] So intertwining those two things is, I think, a bit of the secret sauce. And, you know, we were talking before about how an amazing, uh, meeting of two ADHDers and one person with autism trying to negotiate something. We’ve also got an incredible, extended management team, and, our lead tutor, Sam, who is, uh, is leading on this, is, is just incredible.
[00:34:36] He’s able to deliver it in a way that me and Gita couldn’t.
[00:34:40] We’re all these different pieces all clicking in, and I think that is one of the- I think a lot of people when they come on the course, they look at all of us and they see us all intermingling and go, “Holy, you know, shit, we can actually do this really complicated thing?”
[00:34:57] Like, and I, I just… It’s the mix of the people that actually makes it work.
LUCY The first iteration of the qualification launched this month and is running until November. Keep an eye on the Farmacy website and social media to find out when applications open for the March 2027 cohort.
ROSIE Finally, we know that lots of Farmerama listeners are avid Oxford Real Farming Conference attendees – or perhaps you’ve never been and always wanted to? It’s the UK’s largest agroecology gathering, exploring the questions at the forefront of the alternative food and farming movement. Tickets are now on sale for the 2027 edition, taking place on the 7th and 8th of January. We’ll be sharing some of our own picks from the programme over the next couple of months, but here’s a preview from Andy Dibben, who is part of the ORFC team.
[00:35:32] Andy: My name’s Andy Dibben. I work as the Farm Practice Advisor for ORFC. I’m also a organic vegetable farmer, and I’m employed at a farm called Abbey Home Farm where I grow a wide range of fruit and veg crops to supply our farm shop and our cafe, and I also train a team of apprentices at the farm at the same time
[00:35:51] Oxford Real Farming Conference , it’s a very diverse conference now. It’s primarily a farming conference, but we have social justice strands. We have supply chain strands. We have sort of, community engagement strands. So it’s very diverse, but it’s all based around food and farming.
[00:36:07] I’ve been going to the conference myself as a farmer for probably over 12, 13 years now. But I’ve been working, this is my fourth year working for the conference. And my job is essentially a technical farming advisor for the more strictly, like, farm technical sessions at the conference, make sure we’re covering all the different disciplines within farming: arable, horticulture , but also things like vineyards, mushroom production, trying to bring in all these diverse forms of food production that don’t always get a look in when we’re talking about farming.
[00:36:39] I help shortlist for the conference. I try and keep my finger on the pulse about what the current exciting, innovative things within farming are, but also the challenges that we need to try and provide solutions for. The key focus since I’ve come on board with the team is to try and make the farm practice strands very practical so that farmers can come along in the middle of the winter.
[00:37:02] Essentially for many farmers, this is just pre-season. They get to learn new skills. We’re really trying to encourage presentations to present their information and their learnings in a take-home applicable way so farmers can go back to their holdings and put into practice their learnings that following season with, with real practical nuggets of information
[00:37:23] The way we shortlist actually for the session for the conference for farm practice is we do look at those three major disciplines, so arable, livestock, and horticulture.
[00:37:33] We also make sure we have things outside of those disciplines coming into the conference as well.
[00:37:38] In Arable we’ve got a session called Changing Crops for Changing Climate, and that is gonna be sharing the latest results and learnings from arable farmers trialing quinoa, trialing lentils, chickpeas, and hemp. They’re not brand-new crops to the UK, but people are really refining their techniques. And actually one of the challenges probably in the past is the weather’s not been hot enough for these crops.
[00:38:03] Now we’ve just probably had a really, really nice non-English summer where these crops have actually done quite well, so it’s gonna be very interesting to hear from some of the farmers that have been doing this for a number of years now and refining their systems and sharing that knowledge with other farmers basically.
[00:38:18] Within horticulture, not surprisingly, irrigation will be a big subject.
[00:38:22] It’s been the big talking point across UK horticulture this year. We’ve got a really good session looking at how technology can help us be more targeted and effective with the irrigation we have. Water scarcity’s gonna become a bigger and bigger problem in farming and therefore more accurate, well-timed use of water will help us reduce the amount of water we use.
[00:38:44] Another key subject I think in all forms of growing, both arable and horticulture, is trying to move away from monocrops. Monocrops are every pest and disease’s dream. So we’ve got a very interesting session under horticulture on polycultures, so growing a number of crops in the same space. On a small scale, market garden scale people have been doing it for a while, but we’ve got some larger scale people in that session talking about how they’re applying the polyculture philosophy to larger acreage.
[00:39:13] I’m very keen since I’ve been with the conference team to try and mix scales, so have sessions with large scale producers and small scale producers. I think they both have learnings to make from each other. I mean, you can see permaculture techniques being used on very, very big farms now, and you can see equipment for market gardens becoming a lot more refined and effective, and that’s probably based on some of the designs used on larger scale farms.
[00:39:40] We’ve got a session called hooves amongst the trees. So there’s a lot of talk about silver pasture and the importance of shade for animals in hot weather. But often that’s looked at about planting trees in an empty field.
[00:39:53] This session is talking… it’s like flipping it on its head. It’s introducing livestock into woodlands and forestry. So the trees are already there and the livestock aren’t. And a number of, farmers have been trying this for quite a long time and actually quite often cause quite a lot of damage to the trees that are in there.
[00:40:10] We’ve got a session on natural vineyards, which I think is really, really important. One of the most sprayed, chemically soaked areas of food production or drink production is vineyards. So learning about how people can produce vines with no chemicals and no chemical inputs I think is a really, really important area of knowledge we can share.
[00:40:30] And then also, heritage fruit at scale. So again, you know, especially apples in the UK this year have been really badly hit by the drought.
[00:40:39] Very low yields on edible apples, but even cider apple orchards, which are pretty sustainable and resilient, have had one of their worst harvests in years. So looking to some of the heritage varieties that will be more maybe lower yielding, but more resilient to drought. That’ll be a very interesting session.
[00:40:57] I would massively recommend to anyone, i- it would be to have a really good look at the program before you get there or before the session starts.
[00:41:05] Really highlight the sessions that you… are a do not miss for you. The sessions do fill up, and the, the popular innovative sessions will fill up quick,
[00:41:14] but I also think it’s really, really important, you know, especially as a farmer, try some of the non-farm practice sessions, we don’t farm in isolation on our farms. We need to know what our customers are thinking. We need to know what our middlemen are thinking, so what the wholesalers and how the supply chain’s working. We need to know what the policy’s doing, because policy will affect what money’s available for us, but also what restrictions are put on us around pollution, water usage.
[00:41:39] So this year in particular, I mean the absolute, for anyone involved in food production, the glaring subject of the moment is climate change. So far this year, and I say so far ’cause we’ve only just coming to the end of the growing season, the summer here in the UK we’ve had the driest and hottest summer on record. We are still living with the realities of that as farmers in this country.
[00:42:00] And that is gonna be in the forefront of everyone’s minds.
[00:42:04] So but it’s really important that we can gather and share knowledge. Quickest way of learning is farmer-to-farmer interaction. And it’s always a big theme of the conference that actually we put on loads of really good sessions with experts in their fields, and we share these lessons, have the practical take-home knowledge, but actually it’s what happens outside the sessions is almost just as important.
[00:42:26] It’s the knowledge-sharing between people over a cup of coffee or over a bite of lunch or in the pub in the evenings both catching up with old friends who share your knowledge and your interests, but also meeting new people who will expose you to new techniques and new ways of thinking. We see that just as important is the social aspect and that networking aspect as the sessions themselves, and, and it’s a big strength of the conference every year.
ROSIE: Outro: Farmerama is proud to be a media partner of ORFC for 2027.
You can attend in-person in Oxford, with two full days of over 145 in-person talks and interactive workshops, or you can also purchase an online ticket to access over 45 livestreamed sessions. Head to orfc.org.uk to buy tickets – there are limited subsidised and farmer tickets available so be quick.
LUCY: You can subscribe to Farmerama in your favourite podcast app to make sure you never miss an episode! If you love the show, it’s really helpful to us if you can leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And head to our website to find out how you can support the work we do here by signing up to our Patreon.
[00:43:18] This episode of Farmerama was made by Lucy Dearlove, Abby Rose and Rosie Baldwin. Big thanks to the rest of the Farmerama team, Dora Taylor, Katie Revell, Jo Barrett and Lucy Fisher. Our theme music is by Owen Barrett. Thanks so much to all of you for tuning in. This is the final episode in our summer series this year – we’ll be back in a few months time with new episodes in our winter series.