116 Russ Carrington on why Knepp, after rewilding, is moving into regenerative agriculture

Russ Carrington, manager of Knepp Regenerative Farms, shares how and why one of the most well-known rewilding examples in the world has recently started a regenerative farming enterprise.

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Russ believes that regenerative farming is greater than the sum of its parts and the approach can not only heal previous ecological damage, but also increase the land’s overall fertility and productivity. Together, we deep dive into the regenerative farming side of the business in Knepp Regenerative Farms. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

One of the most well-known rewilding examples in the world has recently started a regenerative farming enterprise. Join me to find out why, how and what, and why they are starting now. Welcome to another episode of In March last year, we launched our membership community to make it easy for fans to support our work. And so many of you have joined as a member. We've launched different types of benefits, exclusive content, Q&A webinars with former guests, ask me anything sessions, plus so much more to come in the future. For more information on the different tiers, benefits and how to become a member, check gumroad.com slash investing region. an egg or find the link below. Thank you. Welcome to a new episode today with Russ Carrington, manager of Nepp Regenerative Farms. We interviewed Isabella Tree of Nepp Rewilding before in August 2019, feels way longer, where we went very deep into rewilding. And I'm very happy to have Russ on the show today to dive deep into the regenerative farming side of the business. Welcome, Russ. Hi, glad to be here. So this is super fresh. You started in February. You've been working on this obviously a lot longer than that, but we dove deep into rewilding with Isabella back in the day. You also touched upon a bit on the farming side of things, but can you share a bit about your story and actually coming to NEP farming or NEP regenerative farming?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yeah, so I've been working with farmers all over the UK for the last 10 years or so in developing the UK's Pasture Fed Livestock Association, which is a community of farmers, grazing farmers developing a brand for their meat called Pasture for Life. And that brand is now applied to milk as well. We were a group of farmers working to build supply chains and reach consumers with products and find how they could be healthier for humans to eat, how they could be better for animal welfare by managing those animals on a purely pasture diet. So I worked with lots of farmers that were kind of going through change from conventional grain feeding of livestock and moving to more holistic, naturally led production systems where the animals weren't feathered. grains or inputs that were managed in tune with nature. So I really had a chance to understand what that change process was for farmers and to stand alongside many of them and help them through that change. And then I had the opportunity to do that for myself really and to set up a farm which I've long since wanted to do when I was approached by the NEPA state to develop the idea of their new regenerative farm.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Yeah. And can you walk us a bit through how it looks like? Because we have the rewilding part, but there always has been a number of farms or a number of acres also part of the estate, but they haven't been rewilded. So what has happened on those fields for the last 20, 30 years when the rest of the estate went through a very stark transition?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, you're right. There's been about 10% of the estate which sits outside of the rewilding areas. And that's mainly because those areas are divided from the main areas by row and a village and other highways and physical infrastructure in the landscape that's kind of prevented them from being part of this big area of rewilding. So they've been farmed in a sort of conventional sense. Some of them have been tenanted out to different graziers and they've had a range of different management over the last 10 to 15 years as the estate has stopped doing its active farming itself and relied more heavily on other people to manage that land. So what we've been doing for the last six months is to free up a lot of that land and bring it back into a single farming enterprise that we can now develop into something. But this whole idea of a farm alongside the rewilding project is a much bigger conversation around how we can restore nature on a landscape scale. So what we're really working to demonstrate and understand more of with what we're doing at NET is actually how neighbouring parcels of land under very different management regimes can actually relate to one another and support nature recovery on a landscape scale. What I mean by that is how we can view areas of rewilding as real strongholds and refuges for nature and various wild species and how then we can manage our food producing land in a way that nurtures corridors and links and space for animals, wild species to travel from those areas, those strongholds through into the landscape and to be more integrated and part of farming and food producing areas.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

And... I remember with Isabella talking about the farming piece. And do you know, maybe it's the wrong person to ask this question to, but do you know why now? What has made NEP decide to not just keep renting out the land for another five years or 10 years, but to take on another huge project? Because the farming piece is, even though it's between brackets, 10% of the land, but it's a huge transition to take on this massive, massive other transition as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

That's right. It's a very good question. And I think NEP has had in mind to do something with this land for many years in fact and I was actually leading a group of farmers we brought down here about five years ago so and I remember at the time the owners were talking about how this piece of land could be managed in a way that adds to and builds on the rewilding and I think really the owners have said it's taken the time to find the right person i.e. me which I'm really privileged to be able to do to help bring this together in a suitable way and also there's a bigger conversation around the role that rewilding plays in the landscape and in farming and food production and I think the discussion has become more and more heightened over recent years more and more people are inspired to rewild but then that has to be balanced with food production and how we feed the many mouths we have in the UK and beyond and so it's kind of brought it up the agenda as being something more important for NEP to engage with and so there's always been this opportunity sat there waiting for the right time and I think the other things that's been quite a catalyst is one of the tenants on the farm was moving away so there was some of the land was coming back into the possibility of doing something with it and

SPEAKER_00 7:14

yeah

SPEAKER_01 7:15

everything sort of just came together I was ready for something new and a change and yeah we had a phone call last summer and we've been developing the conversation thereafter and yeah as you said I was here starting in February to

SPEAKER_02 7:31

really get the ball rolling. And because that's one of the main criticism has been on rewilding, you're not producing a lot of food, which is a whole different conversation because obviously the lands where you would be rewilding are not the most suitable for extreme food production, etc. But I think the discussion should then go to you. Okay, so how do you change the farming system, which obviously is something we discuss a lot on this podcast. So what are you trying to prove or to show with NEP farming or regenerative farming that is different from, for example, the mission of NEP wilding or other regenerative farms?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Well, I think to be fair, the rewilding areas at NEP do produce quite a significant amount of food and that they are producing 75 tons of live weight meat per year.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

And just to give a comparison to what are you looking for to produce on NEP regenerative farming? Because it sounds like a lot, but then I don't know that. What's an average number that you've seen? How does it stack up against something else.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, I mean, it is very low production in comparison to an intensively managed farm. And I think we will, on the regenerative farm, we'll definitely be producing more. But what it does do is the net pre-wilding shows that you can produce a level of food, albeit not massive amounts of food. You can produce some whilst also delivering lots of other benefits for

SPEAKER_02 8:54

nature.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

And so there's lessons in there.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

It's not either or. There's a both.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Exactly. and so what are the principles of that that we can then take to more of our farmland suited more for food production and how can we integrate elements for nature and wilding within that space so it's taking a lot of learnings from the wildings and so for example on the regenerative farm how do we create wild spaces for nature on those farms how do we help nature into our fields through species diversity, healthy of soils and better marginal edge management so for example the edge of woodlands or the edge of fields with hedgerows and other features in the landscape and kind of making more space and habitat for wild species. using those rewilding principles.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

And walk us through, obviously we're audio, so you have to talk visually, but what's the current status of the land? I mean, there have been different tenants, so they're different as well, but like a general, what should we imagine if you haven't visited that area? How does it currently look? And how do you, let's say, hope it looks in five or 10 years time? What would be the shift we could see if we would visit now and we would take a picture or film it and we'll come back in five or 10 years?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, great. Well, we can describe a bit of a vert your walk here but sort of setting out from the village and walking into fields that have been grazed by sheep in the past and those those fields are very the grass is very very short and because they've been grazed very tightly over the years. The hedgerows that we see on the side are in some ways bottomless. They have height, shoulder height, but the sheep have been in the hedgerows and the hedgerows are what we call is quite leggy. And so it feels a little bit stark and bare. And as we walk across those fields, it's squidgy, it's underfoot, and there's a lack of real rooting, depth of rooting structure in those fields. But as we then might walk a little bit further into some of the other fields that have been grazed and managed differently, we see more tusky grass, more thatchy material underfoot, some bigger hedgerows that are kind of billowing out and turning into trees and lines of trees and bases. And so there's elements there on a short virtual walk that are in need of improvement for nature, but also some elements like those hedgerows that have so much more potential and could be the great foundation for some more useful habitat performance. So what we're doing over time and what we'd see walking through the same area in five years' time is to see that primarily those hedgerows are really more restored and they are much thicker and provide more habitat in themselves and that we might see a range of different hedgerow shapes and structures and stages of growth. We'd see far more diversity within the fields, the plant species, different flowering species. We'd see hopefully more livestock rotating and moving around and again providing lots of different grass structure and shape with insects following the livestock and churning through the dung, perhaps some poultry there following behind the livestock, again working their way through the pastures and opening up some of the thatch and feeding on grubs at the dung. And a real sense of there being more life in time and more activity going on, more people involved on the land as well, more businesses starting up and being part of the regenerative farming journey, people visiting to come and understand what it is that we've been doing and are continuing to do. So I think people... What I hope is that in five years time, there's much more that does around to be gained from walking through those fields.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Literally,

SPEAKER_01 12:55

yeah. Yeah, very much

SPEAKER_02 12:57

so. So how big is the farm or the farms in terms of acres and what kind? I mean, you're still developing obviously a lot and it's going to be, I think, adjusted many, many times. But what are you currently planning to do, let's say this year, 2021, in terms of acres, in terms of graziers, how much livestock could we expect if we visit, I don't know, if we are allowed in the summer?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

So the farm area is 150 hectares at the moment so just a little bit over 340 odd acres and the land is in varying condition only about a third of it is currently fenced for grazing animals so that's our real starting point is the area that's fenced that we can graze from the summer. The other areas we're going to work to fence and bring in water infrastructure so that we can then raise them in the next two to three years. And we're really working hard at the moment to set our vision for nature on the farm and how our management practices will work with nature. And we're going to be taking that to various bodies in the UK, including Natural England, who help support farming through grant schemes Countryside Stewardship And we're going to be seeing how we can work with them and partner with them to help deliver our vision for nature. So there'll be work to do if we're successful in doing that, such as fencing, investing in the land, investing in creating space for nature. So it's kind of going to be transitioned. We're going to transition new enterprises in and then transition more land into the farming rotation, if you like. And so really the big projects this year in 2021 are to establish the beef herd and get that mob grazing around the farm and mob grazing is where we're going to be grouping animals together and moving them around with the help of electric fencing but also virtual fencing as well we're going to be trying some GPS collars using the no fence system from Norway

SPEAKER_02 15:30

super exciting yeah really exciting we had fence on the podcast I think a month or two ago I will put it in the show notes as well the virtual fencing I think we have to explain it again for people that didn't listen to that one or don't know what no fence is but walk us through that and what kind of if it works obviously when it works because it's all relatively early but what kind of possibilities that would give you as a manager

SPEAKER_01 15:54

yeah so the no fence systems work a gps collar that hangs around the animal's neck and it's very lightweight it's got a small solar panel on it that keeps batteries charged and and it can GPS locate where that animal is. And then through a mobile app device, the farmer or grazer is able to control where that animal goes or the boundaries for grazing area. And the way the collar works to keep the animals within that boundary is that as an animal might get close to the boundary, they get an audio warning or it emits a sound the animals hear to indicate that it shouldn't really go any further because if they do keep going further, and they ignore the audio warnings they then will receive a small electric pulse through the contact with the collar around the necks which will be enough to deter them as they would if they were to get to an electric fence and then so they start to associate this audible sound with the possibility of a small electric pulse they then turn back the other way so what it enables us to do is to more interestingly manage the grazing in some of the areas where we want to encourage more space for nature or more diverse habitats. So we can, rather than having permanent fences where we might have that against a hedgerow, a particular area that's a very hard boundary, we can actually be much more flexible with that boundary and target grazing in some of those areas at certain times of the year, such as when it might be the right time for certain species, such as the brown hairstrick butterfly that lays its eggs at certain times of the year in the late summer. And so we might want to keep these animals out of those areas in the late summer. We might want to embrace more heavily at other times of the year. And so we can use those collars to more interestingly interact with the nature corridors that we're creating. The other thing is that we can use them in a more managed grazing sense. If we want to, as we would with mob grazing, electric fencing, we can use those collars to move the animals around more effectively. in tighter mobs and that's going to be a big part of what we're going to be doing and the rest periods that come from keeping animals out of certain areas for long periods of time.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

And I think also because you mentioned before only part of the farm is currently fenced and that would require a lot of money and time to get that completely permanently fenced or even partly semi-permanently fenced and this potentially unlocks a lot of that land to actually be grazed in certain times and moments etc. without bringing in all that infrastructure that comes with fencing.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

That's right. And fencing is very expensive. But we've sort of actually taken the decision that we would still like to have a physical fence around the whole area and especially where we've got grazing land next to roads and highways. Just in case, yeah. Just in case, exactly. But there are some people in the UK using these collars without any hard fencing between quite busy areas, but it's not a risk we're quite prepared to take yet. We're

SPEAKER_02 19:02

still early on, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yeah, exactly. We really want to test out the collars fully before we venture that far. But then there'll be no fencing... internally so we've got several areas that kind of can be ring fenced it's not all on one chunk all together but where we can ring fence areas we won't have any fencing in between in the in-between fields although there are hedgerows there we won't need to have permanent fencing we can use the virtual fencing or electric fencing where appropriate to provide that boundary in a semi-temporary way

SPEAKER_02 19:35

and in terms of impact on let's say the neighbors the farmers nearby I mean, of course, the rewilding project has, Isabella shared that, got a lot of negative feedback at the beginning or the first decade plus. People definitely not agreeing to what was happening or not understanding, not seeing it, et cetera, et cetera. And now that seems to have flipped to a certain extent. This might be less of a wild transition or less of a leap compared to rewilding, but still it's very different from, I'm imagining how some of the neighbors are managing their land. connecting to them, incorporating that into what do you see as your role there beyond the virtual or the real fence?

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, very interesting point. And I would say in my previous experience as well, the whole discussion has moved on around what's right and what's better for land management. And so more and more farmers, I think, are more receptive of the idea of rewilding or the very least making space for nature on their farms. I think society as a whole is seeing much more important that is now. But what we're actually doing here is already talking to the neighbours beyond the land that I'm managing and we're talking to those neighbours about how they might be part of this landscape scale restoration for nature as well. So as we're creating corridors and space of nature across the regenerative farm that link from the area of rewilding, how can we continue those corridors on through the farm, up into the landscape, through the neighbour's land? And that's not about creating highways for beavers or eagles, but it's about creating pathways for some of our smaller wild species, such as bats. toads and amphibians and dormice and other significant species which are in need of our help really to recover their populations.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

How did those conversations go?

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah, really good actually. I think the neighbours here, they've become receptive of what NEP has to offer. They've seen how NEP has become successful and they're now listening, which is really good. And so, you know, they're being quite creative as well in conversation with them about how could they link up with us and how could they connect, I don't know, a hedgerow or row of trees or some physical feature that links to a feature that we've got on our land. So it's taking away the ownership boundaries that may prevent collaboration, may prevent cross-boundary thinking and actually thinking much bigger on a landscape scale how these corridors and connections can be harnessed and nurtured.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Which is absolutely fundamental, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Yes, it is. But it's perhaps worth highlighting that this is also the direction in which future agriculture policy in the UK is moving with the obviously leaving the European Union we're moving out of the common agriculture policy developing our own domestic agriculture policy and part of that is likely to be the environmental land management scheme or ELMS as it's known and that is still being formed at the moment but being piloted in a few different ways and the direction of travel with that is around how land managers and farmers are able to provide ecosystem services and public goods for society such as increased biodiversity, cleaner air, cleaner water and other elements that farming can help society with. So although all of the answers aren't there yet as to how that policy is going to work, the direction of travel is around the public goods and ecosystem services. So we're kind of really trying to align ourselves to that now and work towards it so that as the policy is released, we're in a better position. And so our neighbours as well, there's a real sense of let's work together and get ourselves ready for the future. Farming is a long-term game, so we need to be putting these platforms in place now.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

And how much of the decision to move towards regenerative farming do you think comes because of that? Because of the potential, let's say, tailwind from political support, policies changing, payment schemes changing? How much of that has helped to time it basically now and not a few years ago when this was way more unclear, basically?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Yeah, it's really helping actually that policy changes are definitely moving it in the right direction. There could be questions about the pace of that there always are yeah and whether a lot of the promises we're hearing farms are hearing now will actually come into reality as we've seen in the past lots of good ideas get held up in bureaucracy and lead to unintended consequences but it's definitely helping and the fact that a main income source in terms of our basic payment scheme that that's being phased out over the next five to six years that's a big big thing for farming business models so I think it's making almost all farmers sit up and think right how do we restructure our businesses to make them future ready and so that's providing a really good environment for farmers to be rethinking and re-evaluating their mindsets and approaches to how they manage their land and for me that's what's needed to create these changes

SPEAKER_02 25:02

absolutely and As it's such an exciting time now, I think we can say for farming and food in the UK, for let's say, let's imagine there's a room or a theater full of smart impact investors and smart investors listening in and understanding this, or at least they've read the books, they visited maybe NEP, they visited farms and they want to get into the space or they want to start to deploy capital. You as a farmer, obviously not giving investment advice, but as a manager, as somebody that manages land and is managing a lot more, quite a big chunk of it, actually. What would be your travel direction? Where would you point them to look, to learn more, to dive into, and maybe to even consider putting some money to work? It's a really hard

SPEAKER_01 25:46

question, actually. That's why we run a podcast of 120 interviews. Yeah, it's a really interesting question, actually, because in my mind, many of the solutions or motivating factors to enable farmers to move to more regenerative systems are not product-based, they're not tech-based. so much. They're knowledge-based, skill-based. And I think there's two ways of looking at that, really, because I've seen lots of tech solutions coming in to agriculture, and many of them are proven very useful. But I think many are adding a cost that may not be necessary and don't necessarily lead to the right outcomes. But instead, and as is often said, and I think perhaps it was Benjamin Franklin who first coined the phrase that the best investment is an investment in knowledge. and I would really like to see more investment in farmer knowledge and assistance with mindset and mindset change as to how because that is where the real solutions lie I believe farmers know their land they know their farmers are the best people to lead the change but very often as I've found they're perhaps lacking the knowledge or the confidence to try something new and approach things in a different way so for me that's the area of needs investment is our knowledge and perhaps even how that knowledge is better shared between one another between farmers, between peers and the process of continual knowledge gaining or learning beyond what might be agricultural education up to the age of 20, whatever, but it's sort of a lifelong process, farming. And I think there needs to be more recognition of that and how farmers that have been out of formal education for 20 years can return to learning new knowledge and new ways of doing things.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

And so how would you, let's say you're in charge of a large investment fund and quite a large one, let's say a billion dollars or a billion euros or a billion pounds, what would be your top priority? I'm imagining education, but how would you approach that? Let's say the investment conditions can be extremely long-term, but it has to come back at some point, preferably with some kind of return, but also that you can choose. So what would be your focus in the education piece if you had a large resource base, basically? I

SPEAKER_01 28:07

think one of the best One of the best ways to spend money, although it may not give enough of a return for what you have in mind, but I think one of the best ways is to invest in people skills. And in particular, I'm thinking about facilitators, people that can facilitate conversations between farmers and one-to-one as well to help farmers change and adapt. And then as a result, I think we will see farmers better connected and farming better delivering against the objectives we need for the future, be that food production, benefits to nature, and also profitability for businesses. And so as a wider society, if we've got those right skills in society helping farmers and key land managers to learn and be better at leading their businesses in future ready ways, then society will benefit from that investment that's where the return will come how that benefits the individual investor I don't know but I see an increased upturn in economic value as a result of investment in society

SPEAKER_02 29:11

so the challenge there would be to I think many are trying to figure it out as well in general in education is there a business model for the entrepreneur and the investor not just for society because that one is out of the question obviously because any investment in education usually has an enormous impact on society so how could you finance that still have some kind of financial return beyond all the impact return obviously you're making the farms on the farmers on the land and that's on society as well it's not an easy challenge but I think people have to because it keeps coming back in this podcast as well the farmer education the farmer knowledge is something that has enormous opportunities and hasn't been cracked completely or hasn't lived up to its potential until now and if you could change one thing over So you have a magic wand, which gives you not the investment fund anymore, that unfortunately we took that away, but you have a magic power where you could actually change something in agriculture and food overnight. What would that be?

SPEAKER_01 30:09

I think it would be mindsets. I think there's a lot of value in readdressing those mindsets and it being a much firmer foundation for farmers to deliver against future needs. I'm not critiquing farmers for where they're at at the moment, but farming is a really hard career and often it's an isolating one. And so in my experience, it's been instrumental for many farmers to be able to link with other farmers and have their mindsets challenged and that isolation taken away. And the great thing about the internet and email systems is that we're able now to connect from remote places across the UK and connect in central online platforms. makes such a difference to farmers' approaches to new ideas and new ways of doing things?

SPEAKER_02 31:16

No, I think we're underestimating the power of that connection and also the accessibility of knowledge and the easiness. Of course, very often with very slow internet connections, as soon as you are in rural areas, but the access to a lot of this knowledge wasn't there 10 years ago or 15 years ago, let alone 20 when some people started or 30. And now there is maybe even too much, but there's a lot of free and very very cheap online education available. The issue is what's right for you and where does it meet you in your part of the journey and in your right mindset, because otherwise it just bounces off because it's just too far out there or not enough, not challenging enough.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Exactly. Yeah. And it can be as much a problem when there are so many ideas bounding around and so many things to get involved with. You could spend your life just going to conferences on these topics. And there's something about kind of knowing the direction of travel and knowing what's relevant and sometimes that comes back to having a strong vision and strong understanding of future direction for people if that's lacking then can turn into a scattergun approach trying lots of different things when sometimes it's good to know where things are headed or where you as the business, the farmer needs to head.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

And what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't believe to be true? And this question is definitely inspired by a question John Kempf likes to ask in his podcast. But in this case, what do you believe? Where are you contrarian basically when it comes to regenerative agriculture?

SPEAKER_01 32:47

I think for me, the one thing that I'm seeing talked about a lot at the moment is kind of what is regenerative agriculture And some people and organizations are kind of putting quite definitive definitions on it. Whereas I see regenerative agriculture more about being a direction, a direction of travel. And it's not about a specific goal. It's about taking on board principles and ways of working that regenerate the land every year, building on the previous year. And so there's no set goal. set end point it's all about the journey really and building our farms building nature on our farms and building the value to society of our entire landscapes countryside

SPEAKER_02 33:31

yeah I see that it's very interesting people trying to find a definition for something that if you talk to any advanced regenerative farmer or farmer that are actually when I say it doesn't make sense but farmers that are applying regenerative approaches and practices they say it's never done you're always to have another five ten or maybe even more years probably more years to go and it's not an end point it's not a binary question but everybody is asking what's the definition and actually the truth of the matter is there is no definition because that would mean that there is like you either are or you're not no there it's a journey it's a continuum as Ethan Soloviev says very nicely like it's not like somewhere between degenerative and regenerative but then you go beyond and you keep adding more trees to the system you keep changing practices you keep increasing biodiversity hopefully increasing soil carbon to a certain extent, increasing diversity in general, increasing life, basically, as you said earlier in the interview. It never finishes. It's not that you say 10 years, okay. Maybe you're done there, but the land isn't done. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

And it's what makes the rewilding at NEP a really interesting place because what is that regenerating and what's most relevant to society now in this day and age? There's a strong balance towards regenerating nature, perhaps less so for food, whereas on a regenerative farm it's a little bit the inverse of that so it's good to question what is it we're actually trying to regenerate because there are many many different ways of measuring that but as a whole if different areas are regenerating different things as a whole then if the balance for nature or health or society is being lifted then that's a good thing and so having diversity of approaches is also a good thing

SPEAKER_02 35:14

and you bring up measurement and this might be a rabbit hole but what are you going to be or what are you measuring at NEP regenerative farms? Yeah, great

SPEAKER_01 35:22

question. I've actually tried to do this in a bit of a diagram, which people can see on the NEP website, the pages of the regenerative agriculture, and actually try to illustrate all of the different areas that we are going to be measuring. And there's a real major focus on the natural capital side of things, lots of different things to do with water quality, water quantity, soil, soil carbon, soil health, and then biodiversity from plants being through to animals, insects and other significant indicators of success. Key things perhaps being things like dung beetles. Dung beetles are very crucial to livestock systems in how they feed a part of the animal's dung, but also then how they support carbon sequestration through their tunnelling and underground activities and how they support bats, for example, as their predators. Bats playing a role in our ecology. So all those sort of things. And then we're also measuring the economic performance in quite a bit of detail of the business. How much is it costing to set up? Is it costing to run? How is our performance as a business in terms of output and margin? We're going to be benchmarking a lot of that with industry data from across the UK. And then some of the more softer societal side of things. How are we able to improve or impact the health and nutrition of the food we're producing soon. Leaf initially and eggs at some point, and our market garden as well, which I hadn't yet mentioned, how we can improve the number of people we're feeding off this land, how we're perhaps helping people to develop their skills, give access to green spaces, and all of these things, which again, I think are really relevant to future agriculture policy, because in measuring them, we'll be able to evidence what it is we're actually delivering for the environment. environment for society and for nature

SPEAKER_02 37:20

yeah and you'll be able to do that from year zero basically or t0 exactly yeah which in many of these processes and i think in rewilding um probably a lot of those things would have been amazing to do that 25 years ago but just wasn't the case it wasn't the time then to do it and now looking back you can see the changes but it would have been amazing to see i don't know soil carbon changes as well which wasn't the thing that back in the day but some others yeah you would love to go back in time and set up a few cameras as well and and follow a lot of these things. But now you have the chance to do that on all the different pieces of land that have been managed differently and are now being obviously transitioned as well to see those changes.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah, exactly. And it's really interesting, isn't it, the fact that when the rewilding started that soil just wasn't a thing. Now everybody in this space is talking about soil health and it's amazing to think back that it wasn't relevant back then. And so that was a real regret of the owners, the Borough family, not to have been able to get a better handle on some of those things and it's made us think now if we're baselining now what are the things we should be measuring now that we don't think are relevant but in five ten years time will be anything that comes to mind

SPEAKER_02 38:29

not really because that's a difficult one like the

SPEAKER_01 38:32

unknown unknowns are yeah exactly we're trying to take a really broad view and so that if there is something we've forgotten to measure that actually we can relate it to something else that there might be other indicators and proxies for those other things and so what i mean by that for example example is by taking a keen interest in dung beetles because they play such a role in our pasture ecosystems for things happening in the soil but also in the air such as bats they could be a real indicator for other species that I don't know we might discover in 10 years time there's another key species that is really dependent on on dung beetles as a food source but so we can use those dung beetles as a proxy in that example

SPEAKER_02 39:13

no I think that's extremely difficult but extremely like you have to cast the widest net poll and hope you catch the few things that we're going to be focusing on as proxies in 10, 15 years and beyond. I want to thank you so much, Russ, for your time today and wish you all the luck, obviously, with this enormous transition. It's going to be a very, very busy year and I'm looking forward to checking in when things are underway and seeing how much of the vision is working, what is adjusted, what is changing and how things are transitioning on the NEP regenerative farms.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah, well, you've caught us right at the beginning. So I'm doing a lot of theorizing about what we've got planned and, you know, we might hit a big stumbling block. It's a good T0, yeah. Yeah, that's right. But I think even if we don't for sure we will encounter problems and I think this is something people shouldn't be afraid of is then how we deal with those problems how we overcome them are almost more important they're almost where more of the learning and magic actually happens so you'll have to come back and we'll speak again to find out more about that in future years

SPEAKER_02 40:14

and visit definitely

SPEAKER_01 40:15

absolutely yes yes very welcome

SPEAKER_02 40:18

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