Update from Groundswell 2025 – Rachel Boot

by Landowner Officer, Rachel Boot

There have been some recent changes within the Making Space for Nature project.  Our treasured team member Alexa decided it was time for her to up sticks and undertake a wonderful adventure hiking across the Scottish Highlands. And with her departure, came the opportunity for me to step into her role as Landowner officer.

I was pretty thrilled that one of my first obligations was to attend the agricultural festival Groundswell, at Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire.  Groundswell started 9 years ago, offering a meeting point for the burgeoning movement in regenerative farming – a place where farmers, growers and producers from far and wide could come together to share knowledge and advice, to meet and support each other on their regenerative journey.  Since then, it has come a long way, growing from the 400 attendees in 2016, to 10000 this year – as I listened in on snippets of conversations around me, people marvelled at its scale now, how much there was to take in, how it seemed more commercial than the early years.  And there is a good reason for this – the concept of regenerative farming has now finally tipped over into the mainstream, to the point where even supermarket consumers will be familiar with regenerative brands like Wild Farmed flour, which now fill the shelves of Tesco and Waitrose.  Regenerative farming is no longer a fringe movement, but one that is increasingly recognised as a desperately needed approach to restoring our soils.

Regenerative practices take a holistic approach to soil health and our wider ecosystems, aiming to reverse the damage caused by intensive practices such as excessive ploughing and inorganic fertiliser use.  These widespread intensive practices, which became standard in the mid 20th century, were adopted as a means of increasing food production after World War 2, yet within decades were found have detrimental side effects. From loss of soil structure and water retention, to a disruption of the soil microbiome, pollution of waterways, and ultimately to stagnating yields, the knock-on effects are still revealing themselves to this day.

But in the face of these challenges, farmers are tenacious, determined and adaptable, as the enthusiasm at Groundswell proves well: I heard story after story from farmers about their journeys into regenerative practices – one dairy farmer, who found his pasture suffering, his cows unhappy, and his inputs racking up, said he felt like he had no choice but to change his way of doing things, and that overnight he “drove his farm off the edge of a cliff”, launching into regenerative practices and not looking back.  Another had committed so fully to a no-till practice, where the soil is disturbed as little as possible, that he had sold all his ploughs – he had worked hard to repair the damage that year after year of ploughing had caused, he said, and he would never be ploughing again.  The common theme that underpinned all these stories was that none of these farmers regretted their decisions. Yes, their journeys had been steep learning curves, and mistakes were made and corrected along the way, but they were living testament to the fact that regenerative practices worked – their crops thrived, their bills eased up as their dependence on inputs lessened, and most importantly, businesses that had previously been on the brink of collapse, now prospered.

Regenerative farming practices and nature recovery go hand in hand, since our soil systems form the base of a precarious house of cards that make up our ecosystems – if they suffer, every else above them, from our biodiversity, to the health of our water and air, will topple all too easily.  But when soils recover, nature bounces back surprisingly fast –  birds start to return to hedgerows, flowers pop up in field margins – their seeds finally germinating after years of being suppressed.  We are seeing this in Kent, with some of the fantastic land management from our regenerative farmers here – to see some of this amazing work in action, watch our short film with Claire Eckley of Eckley Farms here

It’s really exciting to watch the regenerative farming movement grow as more and more farmers change the way they manage their land – I’m already looking forward to seeing how big next year’s Groundswell festival has become!