Farm Gate

What is resilience - and how can landscape-scale collaboration help to deliver it? ffinlo Costain meets Alex Robinson (Moor Wood Farm and Zora Ecosystems), Jenny Phelps (FWAG), and Alex Donnelly (Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Wildlife Trusts) to discuss the role of farm clusters in helping to restore nature's infrastructure.

We need a new generation of inspirational regen leaders, landscape transformers, communication stars, and R&D wizards. Farming professions test every part of the human being, and offer remarkable soul-enhancing rewards. So why are parents and schools still pushing young people toward AI-vulnerable careers in medicine and law, and into burning hot cities and suffocating wards and offices? ffinl...

I talk to ADOPT facilitators, Daniel Kindred (Agronomy Research Circle) and Harriet Scott (Raft Solutions), to find out how good ideas can become great on-farm research projects This is Day 6 of 10 More Days of Groundswell – a series of conversations, recorded in-the-field at Groundswell.

Day 5 of our 10 More Days of Groundswell series, which continues every day for 10 days. I talk to Hannah Thorogood (Inkpot Farm) and Jamie Jack (Pasture for Life, Scotland) about how sheep can be a fantastic ecological force for good.

Day 4 of our 10 More Days of Groundswell series, which continues every day for 10 days. I meet Martin Lines (Nature Friendly Farming Network), Vicki Hird (Wildlife Trusts), Alice Groom (RSPB), and Joe Stanley (GWCT Allerton Project). I find out what they thought of the Secretary of State's address to the Groundswell Big Top audience - and what needs to happen next with English farm policy?

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...

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...

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,...

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 com...

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...

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 Aberys...

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 repo...

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&#3...

This is the third of our programmes investigating Pathways - a 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project that's been running since 2021. We discuss the scenarios work that provided the foundations for Pathways. These were designed as plausible future storylines for how European livestock systems might evolve under different economic, environmental, technological, and social conditions. In...

Topical food and farming chat - with ffinlo Costain (editor, 8point9.com), Joe Stanley (author, writer and Head of Sustainable Farming at the GWCT Allerton Project), and new co-host, Nikki Yoxall (farmer and Technical Director, Pasture for life). We discuss fertiliser, regenerative farming, national security, agricultural resilience, the rural economy and food system research.

This is the second of our programmes investigating the Pathways project - a 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project that's been running since 2021. Today we’re looking at Pathways modelling, which addressed a range of important areas including the greenhouse gas emissions and nutritional value associated with livestock and individual food products, as well as farm animal welfare and biodive...

In this episode of Martin's Farm, ffinlo Costain and Martin Lines (farmer and chief exec of the Nature Friendly Farming Network) discuss water - and how nature and beavers work to keep it in the landscape. They're joined by guests, Ali Morse, the Water Policy Manager at The Wildlife Trusts, and Chris Jones from Woodland Valley Farm and the Cornwall Beaver Project.

ffinlo Costain and Martin Lines (farmer and chief exec of the Nature Friendly Farming Network) discuss water - and how nature and beavers work to keep it in the landscape. They're joined by guests, Ali Morse, the Water Policy Manager at The Wildlife Trusts, and Chris Jones from Woodland Valley Farm and the Cornwall Beaver Project.

We're discussing the parasite burden in cattle: the life-cycle of lungworm and gutworm - how to manage your land and your herd to reduce the parasite risk - the role of vaccination - and how to work with your vet to avoid costly medical interventions. ffinlo Costain is joined by two Somerset farmers: Catherine Pickford from Alford Fields Farm and Lydia Partridge who manages the young stock at...

A 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project - Pathways - has been running since 2021. It aims to reduce environmental impacts while addressing societal demands for safe, nutritious and affordable meat and dairy products. Over the next two or three months we'll investigate the project and its outcomes across six episodes, and meet some of the academics leading the research. In this program...

'Regenerative agriculture...? It'll never work on my farm!' The truth is - it will work - and most successful regen farmers have gone through the tunnel of doubt only to emerge happier, more resilient and more profitable than before. In this programme we'll find out how two farmers have made regen work for them - and we'll discuss the challenge of regenerative cereals... is no-...

The early results from one of the largest soil carbon measurement programmes in UK dairy show measurable increases in soil carbon stocks on farms adopting regenerative practices. British farmer-owned dairy co-operative, First Milk, working with soil carbon measurement specialist, Agricarbon, has undertaken interim re-sampling on three member farms nearly four years after establishing a large-scale...

ffinlo Costain meets David R Montgomery, the author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilisations . In a warm conversation, they discuss worms, the plough, soil bank accounts, regenerative farming, human nutrition and much more. ffinlo also finds out why human health improved in the UK during the Second World War. Montgomery is also co-author (with Anne Biklé) of What Your Food Ate and The Hidden Half of...