189 Matt Chatfield – I’m too lazy to farm against nature

Matt Chatfield, the founder of Cornwall Project, joins us to talk about the crucial impact of ruminants on land, how to build a successful business by farming with nature, and how to create a guaranteed market.
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A conversation with potentially the laziest farmer in the UK. We go deep into why conventional farming in the UK has failed and is failing and what can be done differently. Why animal impact is crucial and how you can build a very successful business by farming with nature, looking very carefully at margins, costs, input and most importantly creating a guaranteed market.

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Chapters

• 2:18 Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil?
• 17:27 The start of the cornwall project
• 30:22 Why did you decide to start farming?
• 34:53 The environmental positive impact of ruminants
• 37:28 How to produce the best meat in the world
• 1:03:39 Ecosystem services, nature recovery schemes
• 1:07:23 How do we make sure it doesn’t become speculation
• 1:16:13 What should smart investors, who want to invest in Reg ag and food look out for?
• 1:18:52 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?
• 1:27:07 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in food and ag?
• 1:29:56 What about water holding capacity?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Get ready because this is a long and deep one. So take a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy. Today we're joined by potentially the laziest farmer in the UK and we go deep into why conventional farming in the UK has failed and is failing and what can be done differently. Why animal impact is so crucial and how you can build a very, very successful business by farming with nature, looking very carefully at margins, costs, input and most importantly, creating a guaranteed market and why we should all focus on ex-vegans as our target market. Join me and learn about the fascinating journey of farmer Matt. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, Investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume. And it's that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community. And so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you, and if you have the means, and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. That is gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. Or find the link below. Welcome to another episode today with Matt Chatfield, the founder of the Cornwall Project. We're going to unpack a lot on sheep, on connections to chefs, on how to build a positive impact on the land in the UK. And I'm very, very excited to have Matt on the show. So welcome, Matt. Yeah, hello. Yeah, nice to be here. We got introduced recently through Ophelia, so a shout out to that. Obviously, anybody actually that has great guests for the show, always feel free to reach out because it's the best way we get people on. But let's start with your story how did you I mean not end up in farming because you actually grew up in farming but you came back to it how how did that happen what made you go away first of all and then come back to it because I think many people quote-unquote escape and don't come back anymore but you decided to to actually do

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

yeah it's um so I mean my whole thing was I was born in Cornwall um and I did start something called the Cornwall project but we actually have a well we had we had a small home in Cornwall but we have a family farm in Devon and it's just across the border from Cornwall So it's very close. And essentially, we've actually farmed the same land for at least 400 years. Wow. So it's only a small farm, but we were basically part of a very big estate. And incredibly, for 360 years, my family actually farmed on behalf of the estate. And I think we were called Yeoman. So all my family are basically buried in the same graveyard. I'm very humble people, but I'm one of the graveyards that actually says Yeoman. And I think he was born, that was Josias, and he was born in I think it's 1770. So, and then, so basically it would have been sort of very much mixed farming for a lot of that time. As I do what I'm doing now, I'm actually beginning to go through the history and I can see what my folks basically did 400, 300, 200 years ago, which is quite incredible. But basically we're in a very, very wet part of the world. We're in between a place called Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor. So the weather comes off the Atlantic, goes up over Bodmin Moor and then dumps all the rain on us before heading off. So it would have been a very, farm and I imagine for you know all that time it would be very much mixed farming so the land that we've actually got is only 80 acres and so my family would have farmed that and it would have been very much sort of mixed farming you know sort of vegetables sheep cattle you know sort of various things but then my grandad was very much part of that generation of after the second world war was like feed the nation and he and the world yeah yeah feed the world I mean I think feed everybody it's very much sort of UK family I feel, you know, I'll try to have a world view on things. But very much in this country, it was, I think they realized that during the war, you know, we were like 20%, I think we'd only be 20% of our own population. So, and so it was the advent, they suddenly realized also they'd built lots of like weaponry and they realized with the same chemicals they could make, you know, nitrogen fertilizer. So my granddad was basically encouraged by the government. And I was doing research to realize that he was basically forced, like he didn't do the things the government wanted him to do. Like, you know, but potentially he could be ousted from the farming. So obviously he was all working up to have a big estate, but he basically plowed all the land, planted ryegrass, drained all the land, saw all the water went off the fields and sort of whatever, would have taken down some hedgerows. But he was basically the first person introduced to Friesian cow into like the southwest of England. So for that time, incredibly progressive farmer, incredibly hardworking man. And he basically, yeah, and it's only now I really how hard it must have worked to try and have a herd of basically 40 Friesian cows on an 80-acre farm in our part of the world. You know, it was quite incredible. But anyway, about 40 years ago, the UK had an inheritance tax came in, which basically meant all these big estates were ripped apart, basically, and a lot were struggling and had to sell. So my granddad had the opportunity after 360 years of farming to buy the land. And it was a huge thing. I mean, I'm 49, but I was only nine at the time, but it was just such a huge thing. was happening but obviously he then bought the land but just after he bought it like that's when things really started happening for the dealership I don't want to go to like give my views on Brexit and the European Union but there were a lot of pressures at the same time hitting farming basically particularly dairy farming markets you know all sorts of things happening so growing up my grandad just never encouraged us to farm I loved it I wanted to farm my mum actually started a dairy farm I used to help her but it was just never an I think my granddad could see the writing on the wall for small farms. This was before farmers markets and these sorts of things. So the last thing in the world he wanted us to do was farm. Go as far away as possible. Yeah, so I did. And I basically went off and was always sort of grew up very much in the environment. I used to go fishing on my own all the time. I'm basically, you know, always, you know, quite, you know, a popular chap at school and stuff. But, you know, I just always loved my own company with my dog. And I'd be down the river trying to catch salmon actually it just gave me a huge love for the environment so I went off and did environmental studies at college and then I ended up going into publishing so not using my environmental background and then I always sort of say I got very hedonistic basically in the UK publishing like now nobody really drinks at lunchtime but like 20-30 years ago they did so basically I went to London and for 10 years I basically worked fairly hard but drunk a lot had a lot of fun um and you know sort of forgot my farmer background but then my granddad actually got very ill um and it's one of my biggest regrets in life actually is he got very unwell and i just didn't take it that seriously and i went and saw him a couple of times and then he died and it was you know and then it was you know just a hard time and i just realized you know i you know i felt very guilty and then six years later my nan who you're very very close to she became very unwell so i actually moved back to devon

SPEAKER_01: 7:43

you feel felt very bad because of course on the personal side but also because you sort of lost that because you said then i did research and understand how hard he must have worked yeah like for that super crucial period in yeah in the history of of the countryside and farming you had a direct access but you maybe didn't mean there were probably also books in that story yeah there was a lot there that you maybe well you saw that or pushed in a

SPEAKER_00: 8:06

corner you sort of saw a man who was even at even when he passed away like you know he was a very physically strong man you know mentally very strong but he'd given his body he basically had one knee replaced when he was waiting for another knee replaced so he'd given his body for farming and And it was actually quite scary thinking, if he can't do it, how could anyone else ever do it? No one could work harder than him. But I still have one memory, and sometimes I cry when I say this, but our farm is basically 100 metres from the graveyard. And when he passed away, I went up there about 5am, cried my eyes out, went and saw his coffin, cried my eyes out. And I was like, all he ever did really was... He would farm, he'd milk cows, spend a lot of time making sure the drainage ditches were clear so that all the water could come off and go in the wood. And he then used to go once a week to Hosley Market, which is just a very small town, you know, so every Wednesday he'd go there. And that was his life. But then when he died, I was one of the coffin bearers, so we had to walk up. I'd done my crying, really, and I thought, I'm just going to be, you know, put a brave face. And I walked up and literally there were like 2,000 people waiting. It was just insane. And it was like... it was like this man such a simple life but was so well respected and it was that was that just hit me like you know just to you know I always laugh at myself because I've got Instagram followers and do all sorts of things but I'd probably have about 20 people turn up to my funeral like it's usually

SPEAKER_01: 9:37

incredible what can we learn about that I think there's something very deep that we don't understand on stewarding the land I think stewarding might be the right word it might be fancy words that I use but Even, of course, he was forced in a system and blocked in a system, and he did probably the max he could possibly do under the conditions, and saw the writing on the wall, but there was no chance to change, or there was a chance to change, but to move

SPEAKER_00: 10:04

with the system. If he was younger, or if we had a bigger farm, the only way you could change, you could see it was like dirty water systems. It's all good stuff, but you had to basically collect all the waste and the at all. You have to still, and this would have cost tens of thousands of pounds. So it was a time when even the small dairy farm went out of business or very ambitious younger people started buying up farms, you know, so that's, there was the beginning of, you know, and I think intensification of, if he'd been a younger man, he would have done it, you know, like if he'd been the next generation, he wouldn't, we'd probably, you know, we'd probably have 800 cows all feeding inside. Or if he would be young now, he would be on YouTube learning about the latest grazing stuff. I don't think he ever would have gone on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. I do think that... Maybe it was

SPEAKER_01: 10:48

20 now. Maybe. I mean, you would be learning. I mean, I think that entrepreneurial spirit is...

SPEAKER_00: 10:53

You're right. I think...

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

You probably would have pushed

SPEAKER_00: 10:57

the boundaries now. I'm imagining. The bit I find really interesting is, because I've now come along, probably talk more about it, but I'm totally changing the way, you know, I've gone from what he's done. I'm now unpacking all that and changing it. But I think his name is Gangmo after John Knight was his name. They're both his dad and his name are both gang as I know him as like gang but they must have his granddad must have his dad must have farmed in a way that was just with nature you know like it would have been the way I'm trying to do it now they must have had such debates about you know when he brought in the ditches and the cow the

SPEAKER_01: 11:35

different cow breeds and

SPEAKER_00: 11:36

it

SPEAKER_01: 11:37

must have been as big as now like huge the discussion would have been exactly similar but the

SPEAKER_00: 11:43

difference is is that I'm sure they would have had arguments but they would have planted the land they would have planted the ryegrass they would have put the chemical fertilizer and it must have exploded it must have seemed like a miracle it must have just seemed like you know it just would have you know like so I finished any discussion it

SPEAKER_01: 12:02

probably would have like look

SPEAKER_00: 12:04

it works I guarantee within one year it would just be like and all the neighbors must have been like you know like it's just like it's a trap because if

SPEAKER_01: 12:12

you don't do it and all your neighbors do and they double or whatever the the X is in that like the multiplier is their production and suddenly you see new roofs on their houses and all of that new cars and cars and stuff

SPEAKER_00: 12:26

like

SPEAKER_01: 12:27

the pressure to go on with that even though maybe deep down you know you see some effects that in a couple of years start to like you have to keep adding more and more but it's a it's a mousetrap it keeps going faster and faster like that wheel that's spinning and that's the tricky part like how do we get off that because if you don't do it somebody else does and you still have the same commodity contract

SPEAKER_00: 12:47

you're still I think James Rebank, I don't know if you know, he's a fantastic guy who I do follow a lot. And his book, you know, he... I didn't read it yet. I really have to. It keeps coming up. For me, it's brilliant because he sort of says his granddad, his dad was a bit like my granddad where, you know, he did the transformation. But his granddad before would literally sit there and watch the farm and watch wildlife and watch the animals for like two or three hours a day. Because I do that. He actually said that should be classed as working. My mum's of a generation where she's like, work, work, work, work. And she'll sort of say, where are you at the moment? I'll say, I'm working in the wood. And she'll say, are you sitting on a chair? And I'll say, yes, I am. Thinking is working. I think it is. I really do think, I mean, we'll probably talk

SPEAKER_01: 13:34

about it. I hope that we can move farming or managing the land from this extremely physical, like you mentioned with your grandfather, like that work that you need to work 10, 12 hours a day. Yeah. physically constantly to partly it's never going to be non-physical I of course I completely understand it but it's also much more let's say knowledge it's very knowledge intensive but that farmers have more time to use all that knowledge and all the observations that are happening and to actually do something with it which means you cannot be running around 12 hours a day because then you don't have the time to actually observe or to process the observing you do the observing but you don't process so I think that down not even downtime makes it sound very bad but like observing thinking hands off and seeing, I mean, of course we all say, oh, let nature do the work, et cetera, et cetera, but it does allow you to have more thinking

SPEAKER_00: 14:24

time. I want to go back to answer your question, but I'm sure we'll come back to it. Because the way I've created the market and the guaranteed market, I would say there's probably not a farm... Mentioning

SPEAKER_01: 14:35

that just like this. We're going to unpack that. Guaranteed market is an interesting thing to unpack. Don't worry.

SPEAKER_00: 14:40

I probably spend more time sitting on my ass watching than any other farm in the UK because I've got a guaranteed... from what I do. I know I'm going to make money. I already

SPEAKER_01: 14:51

see a title for this interview, the laziest farmer of the UK. We need to do a bit of clickbait,

SPEAKER_00: 14:56

otherwise people are going to click on interviews. I always say that I'm probably too lazy and not clever enough to farm against nature. I need it on my side. I think, and I always say, when you've got ruminants, you're farming with nature. As soon as you remove ruminants, nature just wants to try and kick your ass. So I'm like, rather than fight nature, I'm like, let's let's get it on my side so yeah I would possibly share

SPEAKER_01: 15:20

that's a very I love that quote I'm too lazy to farm against nature but let's okay let's start unpacking the market piece a

SPEAKER_00: 15:29

bit if I go back to so my nan died absolutely loved it a bit spent about six months with her at the end and it wasn't a particularly nice six months but I then started really reflecting on like guilt really what I felt about my grandad and also like how could I try and I basically decided I made like three promises to her, one to myself. But invariably what it was was that I'm going to somehow come back and make this farm profitable. But to do that, you know, I've done loads of, you know, I've had a lot of stupid ideas in my time. But for some reason, the smartest idea I ever had was basically I can't farm. And I'm never, my granddad failed because of outside forces. And if I fail, I want it to be my fault. So I decided then I needed to get a guaranteed market for what I was going to produce. And at that time, I thought it was going to be beef cattle. So I knew I had to find a way of finding a market for that. And to do that, I approached my local butcher, who's in a humble part of the world, but they're probably the UK's best butcher. So I approached them and said, I'll go to

SPEAKER_01: 16:32

London. That's a lucky break that you have one of the best butchers in the UK close to you. Or did he become with you

SPEAKER_00: 16:39

one of the best butchers? We didn't realize at the time. Everyone locally, so we come from a place called Launceston where I was born in Cornwall. And we just grew up with Philip Warren Butcher And he was actually, you know, same age as my mum or a little bit younger. And like our population of our town is about 5,000. And the Warrens, they have a retail shop where they have 7,000 customers a week. Like it's, so it's, and we just grew up with them. And in our heads, you're thinking every town must have a butcher like this. You know, we just

SPEAKER_01: 17:06

got so used

SPEAKER_00: 17:07

to

SPEAKER_01: 17:07

it.

SPEAKER_00: 17:07

Yeah. We didn't have a reference to know how good they were, but what they did. You did

SPEAKER_01: 17:11

when you went to London, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00: 17:13

We didn't know. We didn't know. We, you know, so I basically approached them and said, no i know london um i want to farm one day but i'm gonna if you want me to i'm gonna help you create a market in london and i didn't know anything about so

SPEAKER_01: 17:27

you didn't start the farming piece you started finding your market in london finding your distribution channel through the butcher yeah and and and then yeah i mean that's i mean it was that's working working backwards which

SPEAKER_00: 17:39

is fundamental it was it was the first sort of to be honest i look back and it is actually that was i don't know genius it's like it was just such a it just seems so obvious to me that's what I had because I saw my granddad I was just so entrenched that I'm not I'm going to have my own guaranteed market I'm never going to let someone else dictate my price so when I approached Philip Warren his son Ian actually was looking to take over the family business and I think I don't want to speak too much for them you know hopefully they're okay with this but Ian just tried to go back into family business his dad could not have made it any bigger or better I think Philip Warren actually said to his son Ian that you can come into the business but I don't see how how we can make it better. Like, we've already got every single customer, you know? So I came along-

SPEAKER_01: 18:22

Everybody can drive an hour, like we

SPEAKER_00: 18:23

got, like they're here. It cares about good meat. How can we, so I came along that time and said to, and met Ian, it was such, I mean, it was fluky timing. I said, look, I'll do this London thing. Ian jumped on it. And then I just went up to London and, you know, started trying to build, you know, just basically phoning up chefs. And we found really crazy ways of getting, because at Cornwall, we've got our topography is such that you know it's wet and you know we grow more grass for longer in the season than anywhere else so if you believe that grass fed ruminants is the best then we you know we should be the best really but obviously it's we're 240 miles from London so that's the issue is getting code stuff up to there so it took about a year and a half and

SPEAKER_01: 19:07

enough of a bull enough of a because you're not going to drive with a little micro van with

SPEAKER_00: 19:12

a few kilos I did at the beginning for sure but that's not I did for two weeks I drove up and down three times a week. And quite literally, on the last winter, I was driving back down again and I literally fell asleep at the wheel. And I was like, I suddenly woke up and I thought, oh, that's bad. And I was like, this could have been the end of the ride. I'm going to pull over at the next service. And then before I did that, I fell asleep again. And I was like, so then I pulled over and I thought, right, we need a difference. This isn't the best. It's not very

SPEAKER_01: 19:42

sustainable.

SPEAKER_00: 19:43

Yeah, but then we moved up to London and then what we did was we found we actually jumped on the back of the fish system so there's fish going up and down you know to London like a central hub so we basically just put everything on the fish lorry I'd go to the middle of nowhere at 4am in the morning and then deliver I mean it was you know but I basically delivered a van for 7 years and then was up there for 10 years and you know it started you know small but you know within 10 years I mean what I became very good at was we didn't want to step on other people's toes and I always sort of called the big white chefs, like all the, you know, if you know the UK, there's quite a lot of angry white chefs of a certain era. And we realized that we came at a time when a lot of people, a lot of chefs who've been to Noma, young chefs, and they weren't like the cocaine, like booze, they were very serious young people. And they'd been to Noma. And they

SPEAKER_01: 20:38

needed serious suppliers. Was that? They needed serious

SPEAKER_00: 20:41

suppliers equally. And about six of them all went to Noma and they all came back and they realized it was all about the

SPEAKER_01: 20:47

impact of Noma I think we're going to look back at like as a breeding ground not just on the fermentation side because they have an amazing fermentation lab but also just on training like mentally training a whole generation of chefs well I do have issues with Noma because I have been there

SPEAKER_00: 21:03

but anyway that's

SPEAKER_01: 21:03

but never been I have no clue but it's interesting

SPEAKER_00: 21:07

how they must be the most influential they must have influenced more people yeah so there's no doubt there's no doubt so I'm not going to be negative so these chefs all came back influence can be good or bad I'm not saying it. I think the influence on chefs was great, but anyways, it's more, I won't, I won't, but so there were a number of chefs, a chap called Isaac McHale, James Lowe, you know, just about five or six chefs that came back.

SPEAKER_01: 21:29

How did you find it? Because you were in publishing. It wasn't that you were regular, were you regular at the restaurants

SPEAKER_00: 21:34

or you happened to find somebody at the

SPEAKER_01: 21:37

street and you went with your meat? Like, can you please taste my meat? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_00: 21:40

I don't know. I think my, because when I was in London publishing, I didn't even go to a restaurant You know, I was just into drinking, to be honest. You got

SPEAKER_01: 21:50

your calories somewhere

SPEAKER_00: 21:51

else, yeah. Yeah, so it was like, I just wasn't, and then when I came back to Cornwall, I just, honestly, I look back and now, and I don't know, I don't know how it happened, really. Like, somebody told me, it was like, I made this policy to the van, and I'm like, I've got to make this happen. You're almost running on, I suppose, instinct, really. Like, there's something inside, there's something like, you know, there was no logic. It was like, I'm going to do this, and that, and that. It's hard to explain, but I'm glad it went like it did. So, yeah, I literally, I remember I phoned, there's a restaurant, I don't know if it was, Choco Bocco P.O.I., very famous British chef, and he used to own a restaurant called Harvey's. He, then that was taken over and it was actually called a restaurant called Chez Bruce. So it was one of the, so I literally phoned up the head chef, a chap called Matt Christman. My first ever phone call to a chef was, I just looked it up and said, oh, that's the sort of place you want to survive. It's literally what happened. Phoned this guy and said, look, this is Matt Chappell, we're going to work on behalf of a British called Philip Warren. We're going to look to send Cornish meat to London and we're not sure how good it is. But, you know, would you like to give it a try? That's not a very good sales pitch. He literally said, mate, you sound like an absolute idiot. Like, he did literally. But, you know, we'll give it a try. So he went in and it was good. You know, and for a year and a half, he was a pretty well-earned customer, but he was buying Hobib and that kept us going. And then what happened, his number of chefs came back and they wanted to know where the meat was coming from. They heard that we were able to do that because the future Philip Warren, um, What made them so special was in the UK when I, like, it was the same thing for my granddad. It was suddenly the supermarkets came and they wanted really high-protein animals that had no fat because that's how they're going to make money. So suddenly the UK, you know, we had all these beautiful native breeds of animals like the North Devon, like the Hereford, and suddenly Limousin and, you know, Charolais came in. And Philip Warren basically went to all his farmers and said, look, if you've got the land for those animals, do it because you are going to make more but if your land is wet and you know you are going to struggle so what I'll do is if you if you haven't got the right land for these big ones keep doing the traditional breeds and we'll pay you

SPEAKER_01: 24:01

smaller lighter

SPEAKER_00: 24:02

more yeah but just more like able to get fat on the type of pasture we've got he said if you do that we'll pay you a premium to turn grass into something useful that's the whole but he's you know he is a true genius you know just such a you know he came from a very humble beginning he bought a butcher shop but he said this farm is... I will pay you a premium. You keep on doing what you're doing. We'll pay you a premium. So, and I think for a long time, you know, the trend was for lean animals. In Launceston, you know, it's butchery shop. You just had all this like beautiful, you know, I suppose you'd call it. No fat. Yeah. No, we had these native animals, all fat, you know. And it was amazing. But then there came

SPEAKER_01: 24:38

this generation of chefs

SPEAKER_00: 24:40

that wanted

SPEAKER_01: 24:40

that.

SPEAKER_00: 24:40

They were looking for luckily. Imagine if you said to Philip, well, it must be really interesting because he was going against everything. And obviously they were making, they also did dry aging. So the A, they were having animals that are fat they've got a lot of waste they're also dry aging which means you're losing moisture but he stuck with his guns and he just kept on doing it because he knew it was right and then we came along with these chefs and basically these chefs were like this is exactly what we want so it was you know it was a really it was almost like you had to wait 20 years and suddenly so word just spread that you know if you get to know you had this

SPEAKER_01: 25:11

meat that was

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

impossible to find what we did was we started bringing there's a chap called tom adams um to this day is my favorite restaurant restaurant called pick you there's a big going to move like the street food thing. Tom had spent a lot of time in the US, came back, started the coolest restaurant ever called Pit Q. He was like 22 at the time. What is it called? Pit Q. Pit Q. P-I-T-T-C-U-E. Perfect. I'll put a link below as well. And so he started that when he was 22. He started doing like a street food thing under the South Bank in London. It just went crazy. He heard what I was doing, met me, and he literally asked me three questions that I couldn't answer. And I was meant to be like a middleman, but luckily, because I'm probably the worst middleman. If you're a middleman, you better keep people apart. And, you know, you don't want your butcher talking to the chef. You want to keep all of them. So I said to Tom, I can't answer those. I'll tell you what to do. Let's jump in the van. the weekend. We'll pop down to my butcher and you can go meet him. And then he came down. It was the first time we brought a chef down. And as soon as they met, like two obsessed people, one obsessive, you know, like you could just see like, this is, it was just literally like, it was, it was funny. I actually do a food photography. He actually came along the trip with us. So it's all there on camera somewhere. And I, I mean, just a little thing, like, so for Shea Brooks, we were doing whole rib taken off the bone. So Tom Adams came in. This is absolutely true story. He's watching this happen, and we're taking it off, and then we've got the bone, the rib cage. And Tom says, what did you do with that? And they said, well, we trim it, take that out for pasties, and then we have to chuck the bones, and the bones, we actually pay to get them sent for waste. And Tom said, well, if you just cut it a longer time, I'll take that, and then I'll, you know. So he ended up paying 80 pence a kilo for something that was costing us money. But then he was, he then became a very famous dish, you know, like rib on the bone there. And they were charged about eight quid a portion you know like it was just when you saw this happen like right so we're we're not we're like we're saving money you're making money it was just brilliant so so then it became a bit of a all these ambitious chefs because I was doing all deliveries I was getting up at 4am in the morning meeting all the chefs in the morning being a bit of a gossip head to be honest getting quite well known for that but then it became a bit of a thing like if you want to get this meat get to know Matt and then he'll take you down to Cornwall and then you can meet everyone and it and it suddenly became this like tour agency yeah well yeah or a club It just became a club and everybody who was in, you just knew.

SPEAKER_01: 28:26

Was there enough meat? Like this, I mean, was there, like, did this mean that suddenly your butcher was like having to seek other people or was there enough supply or what

SPEAKER_00: 28:37

happened there? The supply was never, ever an issue. The thing is, butchery, you just need to, supply is not an issue. Like in Cornwall and Devon, on the border, there's just so many, you know, we've got a problem more. What you've got is a system where you can animals can be born on the moors and they become you know born in a really healthy environment and then we bring them down and get them fat on like very fertile river tamar valley so because philip warren had got all these farmers to do what they were doing we had just all this but the issue was more it's just balancing carcass that's always been the issue is if you i think philip warren is you know says you know one of those phrases is like you lose money on the bits you know anybody can make money on the you know the loins and the that's all right but you need where you have to balance it. So that was the, that became my job then was to find customers who would not only buy

SPEAKER_01: 29:28

the less desirable quote-unquote pieces. And those are chefs. I mean, chefs can play with that, can do amazing things with waste, which you just mentioned. It's something you have to pay for to get rid of. They turn it into a dish.

SPEAKER_00: 29:39

But then there's, if you look back on Twitter, I remember, because we were looking to grow, but we just needed to be able to get rid of the offcuts. And literally a company, a guy just saw on Twitter are saying that we're looking to start a burger company in Cornwall called Hubbox. They were going to get a sea container and make a burger thing. And they said that we're looking for mince in Cornwall. So I just saw it, put them in touch with Ian Warren. And now they've literally got like 20 burger places around the Southwest. So as we've grown, they have. So they literally take all of the thing, the offcuts, turn it into, so that, and now that, you know, just things like this is crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 30:16

And you could have been doing this for, and you are, for a long time. What made you decide? I mean, of course you, promised it to your grandmother but to get your hands into farming the farming business as well not just because you probably saved actually quite a lot of farms by selling these pieces into

SPEAKER_00: 30:33

London for good prices yeah well it helped a lot but also probably just made them like feel really good because like you know at some point we started selling to Harrods and like in Cornwall we were selling to a place called Ledbury which is just you know you could see certainly that stage was recognised as being the best restaurant in the UK but obviously in Cornwall no one That was quite an idea. But then we started supplying harrows. And then suddenly, like, it actually just gave huge, you know, you go back there, that was when it was like, you know, the more I supply harrows, you know, the same meat that you're having, you know, in the counter, you know, you're having like, you know, the

SPEAKER_01: 31:08

urban, rural, suddenly there was a huge amount of pride.

SPEAKER_00: 31:11

Yeah, it was a lot, you know, and suddenly it was like, oh, you know, um, so, so what was your question?

SPEAKER_01: 31:17

Why farming again? Why farming again? Why farming for you? So I sort of, um, Bye. You

SPEAKER_00: 31:24

created the market, let's be clear. The market was there. I'll be honest, I did the van drive for seven years and it was actually very mentally and physically very, very taxing. My last couple of years in the van, you only rode a lot and it was, and I felt never further away from what I actually wanted to do. So on the face of it, we were getting quite popular, becoming quite social, knowing lots of chefs and sommeliers, becoming a bit of a face on London show. I actually became quite well known of what I was doing so I'd like the YBH Young British Foodies do an award like an honorary title and then I was called I think Maverick at the restaurant I was still driving a van I sort of laugh because at one point the evening standard in London do a like the most influential 1000 people in London and I actually managed to get on it whilst I was still driving a van so I sort of say I was probably one of London's most influential over van drivers but I then it's part of the thing I started taking over kitchens and getting chefs to do pop-ups and things and then I ended up taking over a pub in a very cool part of East London and we just you know this is actually where I started doing the mountain actually but it just went mental like so we called it the Cornwall Project and the whole idea was you know by supporting by giving London very high produce high quality produce we're going to support the local economy we took over this very this pub and it just went mental and it just became like a huge thing and the guy who owned the pub then basically we worked started working together and we actually got ourselves a very cool pub in Fitzrovia in central London London. So I took it over and I ended up basically became a landlord for two years. And I would say possibly very good at keeping people happy. The actual running of a pub, not so great, but we actually managed to get it our first year. So it was a pub and restaurant. It was tiny. We got a big one, which, you know, I've had chef mates for 10 years who never got one. I became, you know, like Faye Masher, the famous evening standard reviewer, gave us like four out You know, it was quite a weird... It was a thing. Yeah, but I'd never felt further away from it. And after two years, actually, me and my business partner fell out. And then the weirdest thing then, this is where it all sort of happened. Because at that time, I actually was on the face of it. So doing fantastic work, being taught by the press and all this, but I've never actually been as unhappy. And when I say unhappy, I was really, you know, suffering depression. Because I just didn't feel connected to Cornwall. It all felt a bit stupid. Then I basically ended up, a mate of mine had a houseboat in Shoreditch. So I ended up basically leaving the pub, living on a houseboat for two years. And that's when it all started happening. And one of the funny stories I always say is, I lived there for two years, and I'd walk around, and every morning, like, it was a beautiful bit of London, like, it was all out there, but there was just so many bits of wildlife, and every day, like, you know, like, grey mullet would come up on the estuary, and you'd be able to see them, and there'd be coots and swans, and, like, just all sorts, and I'd go out every morning, just naturally looking at, you know, like, how, you know, how the ducks are doing, they've had six chicks, are they all right, you know, the Egyptian geese, how are they doing, and in my head, I was just, every morning, just going around, looking at everything, and then we had, like, a meeting of the boat people, like, and I just sort of said, you know, we just became obvious that no one else was interested in what all these animals were but then I suddenly realised I'm basically doing what I would do in farming I'm going out every morning checking all the animals are alright but at that stage I then because it started getting into nature again and then I just started I suppose it corrects to us I could see it suddenly became very apparent that all the work we've done you started hearing about plant based food the vegan movement you started hearing about rewilding and the environmental aspects of cattle And I suddenly realized that, shit, all this work we've done, perhaps it's for nothing. Perhaps we are doing bad. And then it happened. I watched a YouTube video by Alan Savory, which I think is a lot of people, you know, quite a contentious figure. And obviously his idea was actually… Not in our crowd, I think. No, I think… So I watched the famous TED Talk, and basically it was… We don't, you know, we'll actually probably need more room if we're going to save the planet. And I'm like, well, that sounds too good to be true. But, you know, if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. I then just went, that's when it really started. So I basically then started watching YouTube probably for like 12 hours a day for like two years and just suddenly got obsessed with Regen Ag. But also I got very obsessed with identity politics and what I could see in America. I was worried that seeing what's happening in America, identity politics, I could see it linking to the, you know, vegan movement, like As soon as he was moving to London, I just became really, I basically, I remember like in this country, Brexit happened and Trump got in and I had the pub at the time and I was just totally oblivious. And suddenly I was like, I've got myself really stupid. I've been doing all this, fan driving, doing this. I've got, I'm dumb. I need to get smart, like quick. So that's, so basically it was a two year period of just so much information. On a houseboat, watching YouTube to understand farming. They probably thought, they probably thought like I was on heroin or doing something terrible like that guy just always seems to be in his house but we don't see it but I was just in there literally just watching and if I saw an interesting farm I'd go and see them so I visited at the time quite a few farmers in the UK and then but the biggest moment

SPEAKER_01: 36:41

so you were not completely solitary in the house

SPEAKER_00: 36:43

but you didn't go out no you went you went to visit luckily I was still working the wines I was still licking the chefs I was in my house boat and then you know but one bit the amazing bit I've always thought that ham on is the best meat in the world you know the aburaco pigs from actually the dealer. And I got an invitation, you know, from my window of things to go and speak, to go and meet, you know, some of the biblical farmers. And I think I was happened upon, they're basically the best Hamon suppliers in the world. And I spent, I went there and spent like a week with them. And I just realized, like, it's a real epiphany of how do you get the best meat in the world? And then I was suddenly like, actually, I To get a world-class animal meat, you need to have its water around a long time. So the Iberico pigs, for a year and a half, they're actually foraging for a living. They're trying to find all sorts of stuff. It's very dry conditions. So after a year and a half, they literally weigh 80 kilos. They're really thin. And then they put them in the acorn trees, and within four months, they literally double their weight. A

SPEAKER_01: 37:45

lot of muscle at the beginning.

SPEAKER_00: 37:47

Yeah. Not a lot of fat. And then suddenly fat. So to get world-class meat, you need an animal that's walked around a huge amount of his life and then he hasn't been inside yeah then you need to put a fat cover on the end and obviously and that was like a because we've done mutton frequently when I was at the pub like three years before and it was just incredible I just suddenly hit me this is the reason that's incredible I suddenly realized no animal in the world well any domesticated animal has walked further than sheep do and sheep get to a certain age you know once they're ready to be killed they've walked like god knows so then it was like, let's just get those animals and put fat on it. Surely, but I knew a lot by then about aging of meat and the processes. So it was just like, right, actually, I think I've got an idea to go back to corn. I'm going to call mum. So I called mum and I, right, I want to come back. Mum had a lot of issues. My stepdad, you know, they're actually going to be getting a horse next week. But they were losing, they saw taking over the farm and they were just losing loads of money and it was just a disaster. So I came in and said, right, I've got this idea. I want to basically buy like 80 OG sheet get them fat and see what happens and so bless mum you know she gave me the chance really and we did it and it was a real hunch and I remember going to Philip Warren at the time what did he say? Philip Warren right honestly the number of Ian and Philip Warren are just they're two my father and son you know Ian's learned so much from his dad but they are just so astute businessmen and they just know instantly whether an idea is good or not they just know you know and over the 10 years I knew them I told so many ideas and Ian just used to look This is why it won't work. And I'm like, and the same with Philip Warren. So I went to Philip Warren and said, I've got this idea of basically fattening only sheep. And he went, literally, Matt, that's a brilliant idea. And I was just like, what? That's the first time you ever said that. Yeah, it was like, and I was just like, and he said, the main reason is because you've got an aneurysm all the way, you're going to put fat on it. But he said, the real clever bit is sheep produce something called lanamine, which is basically producing the glands and it waterproofs their skin. But when you eat lamb, that tacky flavor, that that's actually lanolin. After about six or seven years old, sheep stopped producing it or produced vain little, so there's no tackiness. So he said, by that age, people were expecting it to be tough and tacky, but if you can age it, dry age it, it'll be tender and there'll be no tackiness. So it'll just be the exact opposite of what you're expecting. And as soon as I heard that, I'm like, shit, that's, you know, okay. And then my next piece of luck was just before, this was like three and a half years ago, I went to something called the Oxford Real Farmer Conference. Again, because of my learning. It was literally flawless for a side. And I was still then like, I've heard about his region ag stuff, but I'm going to have to go back and I'm going to have to use fertilizer. You have to do this, you know, and I just didn't know how to do it. And so I went and met a chap called Chris Jones, who's very into the old beaver thing in the UK. There's a bit of a secret beaver club going on in the UK.

SPEAKER_01: 41:16

I think I listened to a book. Did he write a book?

SPEAKER_00: 41:20

Derek

SPEAKER_01: 41:21

Gow, who I'm actually probably mentioning I recognize the name.

SPEAKER_00: 41:27

So Derek Gow would have talked about Chris Jones a lot. Yeah, for sure. But he's just a beautiful, incredible man. And I saw him. I went to talk. I'm basically... I went to Yorkshire Real Farm Conference. I had to fatten them without all the inputs in the old way. So I went to Yorkshire Real Farm Conference thinking I was going to take up farming but I was thinking I just don't know how to farm. And I happened upon a talk by a chap called Steve Gabriel and he farms in upstate New York. And he was basically came from a conservation environmental background a bit like me. And then he had sheep in upstate New York. They had a horrific drought. Everyone's sheep and cattle were struggling. And he was really struggling. He then just thought right I've got a word I'm just going to put the sheep in the woods and then two months later they came out looking like I sort of say like rock stars like and he was like so then he's gone really deep into it so he talked about silver pasture and he talked about it very much as a track resistance you know so when I then which is

SPEAKER_01: 42:24

funny for you in a place where it's wetter than anywhere else yeah but of course no longer anymore yeah

SPEAKER_00: 42:29

exactly I mean I I mean it was just such a good time to be honest that you know all these things happen by chance but I he yes I saw this and then afterwards there was a question answers and actually Chris Jones from Cornwall said I didn't know Chris but I heard him talk it was so lovely because this Steve Gabriel was like the most gentle spoken man and Chris Jones just started swearing and just so charismatic and I'm like I've got to meet that man so I went down and met him and it was honestly the most inspirational words I ever heard it's changed my life really he went Matt I'm not going to waste your time and I certainly don't want you to waste mine do you want me to sum up everything I've learned in 50 years of farming in one sentence and I'm like okay of course and he said if you farm for nature flavor lives after itself and to me because I knew a lot about nature and I was I was very unique in farming where I was starting with flavor I was so used to delivering meat to chefs and tasting you know that to me was like I can do that like actually and ever since then I've I met some of my best mates. We grew up together, still mates after 40-odd years. And they've all actually been all comprehensive kids, you know, no fancy background. But they've all gone off and done really well in their own field. We all met up about three months ago. And they all said, even though they're very successful, they're still actually like they've got imposter syndrome. They just don't feel like, how am I there? And when I was doing a restaurant, even though I've been gone on this, I felt like I was an imposter. But since when Chris Jones said those words, I've never, ever... I've ever found is I can do this. I can, you know, like it was just a, I can do this now. Like, and I've never looked back, you know, if I had those words, I don't know. Yeah. But then I went back to Plumley Farm and, I was, we had a small home in Cornwall. I was able to do a bit of sheep there. My stepdad was being really, really, you know, pretty nasty, actually. He was really trying to make an idea. So then I went to the actual family farm. My stepdad was farming all the land absolutely horrifically, terribly. But we had this, well, so we had this, I don't know, we haven't even asked any questions. I'll just go for it. But basically, I've seen this talk by Steve Bing and by Steve Gabriel. And we, when we grew up, so obviously all my granddad, he basically plowed the land drained it, but that water had to go somewhere. So basically it went into our ancient woodland. And so... Now you remember the talk at the conference. Yeah, so when we were growing up, so basically all the water went in there for 40 years. So when we grew up, we literally weren't allowed in there because cattle would go in there and actually get chest deep in mud. So my nan was a very strong character. She just never allowed to go in there. Anyway, when I came back to the farm, I was really upset because I just see my stepdad do this horrific stuff I then thought I'm just going to go to walk in the woods and also I went in there with my dad in my years you know she'd been passed away like 10 years but like you know you basically went in there with like just to be just to be ready I literally was just like any moment I'm going to die and then I was suddenly walking around I'm like this is ancient coffee it's like this is like I just thought this is like you know this is we used to farm this like this is this used to be managed obviously you know that'd been a few hundred years ago you could just tell so i went to mum and said look mum i know i'm not allowed to farm the fields but can i go in the woods farm the forest yeah mum was like do whatever you want and that was that was my chance it just gave me that in and it was you all these things that happened and then so then i just basically for one yeah for the first winter and it was bloody tough it's like blood and i've never even used a chainsaw i've started chopping down trees and um but it was absolutely making me you know that it's all those weird things and now i you know what I'm probably most well known for now and to be honest I've been quite I wouldn't be doing it three years but I'll be quite cocky but I've just literally been interviewed this week for UK sheep farm of the year so it's just after three years it's pretty quite crazy but I think what I'm really well known for A is putting mutton back on the map and making London restaurants you know high end but I suppose what I'm really well known for if I am really is basically going to Woodland and accomplishing it and basically showing what can happen if you add room to an ancient woodland you know like and it's yeah it's just been a making move really

SPEAKER_01: 47:25

yeah so what's the change if you would like that first time you walked into that into the woodland and just try to make it visually obviously because we're in an audio podcast

SPEAKER_00: 47:34

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 47:34

and if you would go into that same if you're still farming that how different is it like how does it feel smell sound

SPEAKER_00: 47:42

what's really interesting is my uncle Lanty owned like a half acre bit so we've left that that's totally like it was and next year we have a bit which I've done so when you go in there now right even now it's basically all there's the canopy is totally full it's totally full so no light at all is getting into that canopy floor um you can't hear any birds um in the piece that you left yeah in the piece you left this is the control this is the control control area leaves are still there from last year so even though the leaves fell eight so after nine months leaves are still there so that so basically to me and it's literally i work quite closely of guys from the Eden Project. I don't know if you know about the Eden Project in Cornwall. There's a guy there obsessed with plants. He comes and actually measures everything I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01: 48:27

So just summarizing, there's almost like no life. There's

SPEAKER_00: 48:29

no life. So basically it's dead and there's literally six plants coming up the floor. There's wood soil, there's ivy, and there's a few other things, but that's it. So basically you go in there. I think to the UK, you would think that's like your perfect, beautiful woodland, but it's just dead. There's nothing, like it's dead. So now, where I've now gone into my bit, all I've done is coppiced a few trees and then You know, the hazel, the willow, silverbatch, it all comes back. I've then put in sheep where I think it's right. If you go in there in May, and it's all on video, like it's all on my YouTube, but also the BBC actually came and filmed it the first time I ever put sheep in three years ago. If you go in there now, especially in May, there's literally 160 plants from the seedbed have come up. It's now probably one of the most, like, productive bits of land probably in the UK. And you've got, Trees coming up, coppice, they eat those, they eat the grass, and it grows like... The fields, when I'm in Devon, it's just so, for farming, I think if you get depression or you get like, you know, like mental health issues, it's because nothing's growing. So in the winter, towards that last like March and April, like nothing's growing and like, but the woodland starts growing in like mid-February. Like spring happens like six weeks earlier and it's starting, you're just like, and it just comes alive. And all it is, is, and this is all from the seed bank. So seeds can probably last in the seed bank. Nothing planted. Nothing is in there for 40 years. So, it's you go into one bit it's dead you go into the next bit and it's like you cannot and all I've done is copy it split in light and then put in sheet when I think it's right pull them out and it's just night and day and like it's just yeah it's just so I have chefs down all the time and within like I always say within five minutes of visiting my farm you'll realize everything they say about sheep and ruminants it's just nonsense like they are

SPEAKER_01: 50:22

yeah I was gonna ask like what is that like when you I mean you almost went down the let's say, the vegan route, but you didn't. What did it teach you over the last years on that, the impact of ruminants or the importance of ruminants? If you had to summarize that, not even short, but what would you tell these chefs when they come and say, I've heard about the impact of methane and blah, blah, blah, and we should all eat plant-based burgers? Of course, this is characterizing it, but how do they go through that transition in

SPEAKER_00: 50:52

five minutes? I'll tell you an absolutely true story. It's this lady called Hannah, she happened to be talking about her, we started selling my sheep online, and then she started buying it, and then I saw her name pop up, and then she contacted me on Instagram, said, look, can I chat to you, I want to send you a few questions, so she sent me a few questions, she ended up sending me an email that was just so long, and it was, and just reading it, I'm like, this lady, you know, Hannah, she's got issues, she's obviously got mental health issues associated with food, you know, she just, it was so in-depth, so I said, I'll tell you what, I I haven't really got time to answer this. I think it's better than why don't you come down? So she basically came down to visit. And as I picked her up from the station, we're driving back to my farm. And she basically said, Matt, the truth is I hate animal agriculture. I think it's all wrong. But I've had an eating disorder for like seven years. I've been vegan. And I was going to die. I had to eat meat. So then I saw yours. And ethically, it looked awful. like something I could at least ethically like a good thing but obviously I'm driving to my farm thinking oh shit like see if we get to my farm and she doesn't like it like she you know it was and she got there and like it's quite emotional because she just saw the sheet and she literally started crying and I was like it was just you know so I'm like so what I say to people is What I say is, so when I went through my two years stage, I ended up, I started debating, so I went on Twitter. You mentioned earlier you followed me on Twitter. I always say Instagram is my sales and marketing division. I'm really nice and lovely and it's all about stuff. I call Twitter my political wing. But for two years, I just talked to rewilders and I talked to vegans and I talked to environmentalists. So I think what I did was try to, in my head, come up with something that answered every single one of their questions. So I think I've probably come up with a The farming system, they're going to answer all those questions. And the one thing I say is, I was in my caravan the other day looking over my pasture. It was quite late at night. A barn ant come over. It clearly was hunting over my pasture. I took a photo. And this dear old vegan chap just went, grow vegetables instead. I went, okay, right. Let's unpack that. And I just said, mate, you see this field there, right? I literally kill 20 centi beans per acre per year. I fatten 20 sheep per acre per year. So I've found about 600 sheep on about 30 acres of pasture and 10 acres of wood. So I'm not afraid of that. I kill 20 centi beans per acre. Right. If you want me to grow veg, I'm going to have to plow that field. And when I plow that, I'm probably going to kill 10,000 centi beans. I'm going to kill shrews. The buzzards won't be able to feed me. And then I said, if you want me to grow potatoes, for at least three or four years, hardly anything's going to live on that field. So not only am I killing everything that I start with, I'm ruining ecosystems for the rest of it but if I just keep on killing my 20 centi beings and I'm giving them a good retirement then I've created an ecosystem for literally tens of thousands of centi beings so like it's so when people come and visit they like it's just within five minutes it's like you just get it so now it's now really hard to argue with these like they always they don't really come and debate me now because I think they know they're not going to they'll just come over and have like a bit of a personal crisis because I think you know pretty quickly I'm just quite good at getting to the point and like

SPEAKER_01: 54:20

you know but did you ever had like not that reaction meaning an opposite like somebody that came and and didn't have that switch or

SPEAKER_00: 54:32

it's just obviously it's very interesting it's very interesting because if you show people this bit of wood we haven't touched and then you show them what I have of course it's like and also the sheet just seemed so happy like you know like and i know you're and all the sheep i'm getting i'm basically buying sheep that would have been killed six months before so i'm giving them so you're

SPEAKER_01: 54:54

giving them an extra x months plus creating that that's i mean it's we had a discussion with charles eisenstein here actually on that that piece like death is part i don't want to paraphrase please go and listen to that episode but like death is part of this this agriculture system or the steward stewarding the land if we like it or not like you just made a very good case of uh they're they you cannot escape it if you eat potatoes or if you don't and there is a strong case to be made to actually graze it also from the environmental and all the emission side of things but let's leave that to the LCA people but what does it do coming back to the flavor like that woodland mix with pasture because your hunch was it was amazing your hunch of your butcher was it's going to be amazing but did it end up being amazing yeah

SPEAKER_00: 55:42

it's because obviously what happens is all the flavors in the meat already because they've done all their walking. What I'm now trying to do is get incredible flavor on that fat. With fat, what happens is I want animals as thin as I can get so then I can add totally new fat. And when you dry age, that fat permeates into, if you do a copy, it permeates into the meat. So it's so important. Now my woodland, because I've done Ryan from the Eden Project, we think my family probably grazed it with animals 400 years ago and probably stopped 300 years ago. The climate in Devon apparently changed dramatically 300 years ago. It became even wetter. So we probably haven't managed that for three years I would say every single plant in that wood is communicating underneath the soil with a mycelium network like this and obviously if you've got one plant growing in a field the fungi is feeding you know like it's doing its bit to try and get the nutrients from its surroundings but if you've got a whole mycelium network in a whole wood that's been there for at least 300 years the stuff that it's doing under the soil the stuff it's extracting doing. You can see it. I went to my wood this morning and the vibrancy of plants, you can see the vibrancy in plants. I think we do need to start measuring the nutrient levels and things, but you can see when a plant is firing, it's luminous and it's just bright green and everything in my wood all the time is bright green like it's just it's just trying and you just know you just know this crazy stuff and like yeah so it's um it's you so of these sheep they're eating that and my job is to try and make them as relaxed as possible so their fermentation i do sort of i've got issues like i think like say sourdough things i think in london in east london like people are forgetting to say the whole regen thing is about they're thinking it's about sourdough and about, but I actually think it's about the luminance. But all these people are like, they're getting so high profile for basically doing fermentation. And I'm like, you've got sheep, that's what they do. You need to respect them more, because I'm sure they're a lot better at getting the nutrients and that. But you just, if I can get those animals, and my job is to make them relax, because what sheep will do, they go and eat in the morning, it goes into their first stomach, comes up, and then they chew the cud, and then it goes back down and that's the bit that's really important I want you this sheep farmers do this thing called alive or dead where they go to a field it's like don't worry it's not it's not it's not cool you'll see a sheep no

SPEAKER_01: 58:21

no I'm interested

SPEAKER_00: 58:22

yeah you'll see a sheep it's an interesting phase you'll see a sheep just zonk that like and you just think that's dead you go to you then get people say farmers are like alive or dead they'll do a video alive or dead alive or dead and then you'll get and the closer you get to it before it jumps out because basically it's fermenting it's just relaxed it's chilled it's just there like letting its body just get all nutrients So what I want is my sheep looking as dead as possible during that stage because I know then they're extracting every bit of nutrient and that's going into their fat cover. And they never are dead. One day I'll do it live and it might be dead. My sheep are old and the other one does die. And not less than I thought, actually. But my whole job is to get them eating incredible stuff. But also the remarkable thing is I've got 150 plants growing in that wood. It's obvious they sell for you. I mean, everyone talks about it. It's not like it's a bird. I witness it every day of my life. It's sheep. Because I'm getting old sheep. You know, there's some farms decided they're not good enough anymore for breeding. You know, he's going to send them off the abattoir. I buy those. Some of them are quite healthy. There might be a reason why, you know, he's offloaded them. But more often than not, it's just, you know, they're at an age where they just can't really process enough grass to be able to feed them in the land. But I just put them in the wood. And I, like I said before, like, they just come out looking like rock stars like if they they just sheep that are healthy will go in there eat a bit but they'll just want to go back in the field and like get fat but the ones that are not too well just stay there so I just basically lock them in you know and then and they just get healthy the transformation self-medicine yeah I mean honestly I've just seen it so many times now like well sheep you think you're a bucket put them in two weeks later they just come out and then to be honest I think their body gets into balance so and then they then get fat you know my job is to fatten sheep but also the beauty of my system is... And where I suppose, if you go on my Instagram, where I've, you know, become quite well-known as well is, I remember the first lot of sheep we got, literally mum, we bought like 60 sheep, and mum said, right, Matt, you're new to farming, right, you must never, never name an animal, never get emotional, you know, you've got to be tough and brutal. Like, you know, these are the years to get fat, and I said, okay, cool. Literally, got these first 60, the sheep came running up to us, just like basically wanted to be pet, you know, petted, and mum, we were just looking at love like oh jesus so basically what happens with sheep is obviously they've got two teats and if they have triplets there's always a spare lamb and often a farmer will feed that but then you basically humanize the animal but then they ended up you know going back into flock so every time i buy one of those and it's not very often i'll buy a flock of like two years ago i bought a flock of dorsets which are quite lovely sheep but they're quite they're not particularly big fans of people but there's one dorset came running up and i've kept that one so i've now probably got 10 sheep but i know what guys farmers you've got to own tame lambs they send them to me so I've probably got four sheep that are basically pets of my other farmers, but their kids have grown out. I've got six of my own, and I call them my management team. So what's incredible is you just learn things, don't you? So I'll buy sheep from Bob and Moore. They probably see a farmer twice a year. They're wild as hell. They come into my field, and they'll... You have these 10 managers that keep them in check. Yeah, they'll be like... So at the moment, I've got 240 sheep. So you go 40 sheep, they'll arrive, and they'll look at me like... They basically look at me like I'm a wolf, like a predator. The first thing I do is I get the dog in, my Morgan, which is quite funny. And that makes the sheep suddenly get together. But these sheep are still very scared of me. I then walk into the field and literally 10 sheep come running up to me for a cuddle. So I'm there just basically cuddling sheep. All the other sheep are literally just staring at me. But then the next time I go in the field, they don't move a muscle. I can walk around the whole flock and not a single sheep moves. And they say sheep have got the best facial recognition of any animal on earth. Like they have to, you know, like if you're a lamb, you your mum's faces all look very similar they obviously can tell by the bar but so within as soon as you walk in that field once it'll remember you so obviously when I go in a second time it's just quite a cool thing

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:28

and I mean, it's a potential rabbit hole, but what's next? What would you envision? You have to set up this system that works really well on your farm. You have the guaranteed market. You spend quite a bit of time looking at your land, looking at your sheep, which is great. What do you feel is okay? And you've learned all this stuff on the ruminant impact on land and on woods, which is incredible because we look at woods in many places and think this is sort of the optimum state of etc. And you've shown that that's absolutely not the case. There's a whole world beyond that. Yeah. And we look at very degraded land, honestly, that could be regenerated. So what do you see? Because you're not close to any time of retirement. What do you see as your

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:11

next step? I was just thinking, we ought to talk about some sort of idea to invest money. There's something called the government. I'm trying to work it away. I don't need to rely on government money. It's possible. But for me, the UK government position, I think Europe's heading in this direction. is basically investing in big corporate companies, investing in offsetting carbon. By doing that, the government's going to let people plant trees and the idea of offsetting. For me, there's something very interesting they're looking at, which is nature recovery schemes. What they're looking at doing is you need to have 500 connecting acres. I've only got 40 at the moment. My auntie's got 40. It's definitely aimed at the big landowners and trying to get farmers working together. It has to be 500 acres of connected land. But for me, in my woodland, we've got something called a willow tier. And a willow tier is actually the UK's fastest climbing breeding bird. And I've actually got loads of them. Like, Devon Wildlife Trust have come down. And that was a funny story. So they didn't believe me. Over the winter, I was feeding all the birds and the thing. And I'm a bit of an ornithologist. Willow tiers have been really similar to marsh tier, but there's just slight differences. I found a Devon Wildlife I said, look, I think I've got willow tits. And they said, look, you probably haven't. They're going to be marsh tits. They're very similar. I went, okay, okay, okay. They said, what we'll do, we'll come out in spring. What we'll do, we'll play the voice, the sound, the song of the male willow tit. And if there's any in there, it might take hours, but they'll eventually come, you know, trying to fight the territory. I said, okay, cool. So they came out in spring. And this is no word of a lie. A chap called Rob Pardee, a very good mate of mine now. First time I met him, came down. We literally got 20 meters from the woodlands. And he went, I don't need to do anything, you've got willow tears. So we then walked in the woods, and literally, it's all on Instagram, there's a video of two willow tears, right, building a nest, literally five, like 10 meters from where we walked in. So basically, what I'm looking at doing is, we've got the River Kerry, which, yeah, runs along, and we've got a very ancient railway line that hasn't been used in like 70 years. So my idea is to try and access, buy or lease the land on the railway line, and then basically start trying to connect the railway line and the river and start increasing the breeding grounds of the willow tit whilst farming in a way that feeds people and helps nature. So that's my big project now. And I think that government scheme, it's not totally official yet, they're doing trials, but I think through investment, looking at that would be really interesting for people because I basically, there's a bit of land about a mile away and because all my money is going on sheep and it's going, I'm actually building a barn version. I just said to someone, if someone's interested in this land, you know, you can buy it and I'll rent it off you. It's just on Instagram. And about 20 people contacted. I was like, oh, right, okay. Okay, something is there. Yeah, but that land's soaked. But I think there's going to be, for me, there's going to be... It's obviously legislation's point towards big corporate companies offsetting, particularly like the property sector, big property developments. I'm pretty okay on this and I've got friends who do it and I've been looking at it for a couple of years. But to me, it's a bit of a con for our government. It's aimed at landowners. It's going to encourage corporate companies to buy out farming land. I think personally, we need to keep people farming and we need to try and get small landowners working together and looking at these nature recoveries schemes. So basically, I think, and then we could start using, you know, the technology that's there, you know, we can use like true technology to measure biodiversity, water storage and carbon, you know, securization.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:03

And so how do you envision that as a, would it be some kind of, because of course, it's very interesting to get this land, to buy this land or lease it very long term, but then there's always this little, this pressure of speculation, like to sell it in X years and or flip it because, which happens a lot in real estate, because of, and so how do we counter that? How do we make sure this is long-term, that you are able to farm it long-term or others that are farming with nature and producing food for people? Like, how do we make sure that land doesn't become the speculation ball that we just keep kicking around and people make a lot of money on the transactions?

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:40

I would say, like, the more we need to look at how we are going to structure the offsetting. For me, It's pretty, I mean, obviously we're in the UK, you know, it's the summer, end of summer of 2022. It's been incredibly dry. We now get incredibly wet winters and we're getting dry summers, especially dry springs. Storing water, and I think worldwide storing water is going to be the most important. Instead

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:09

of draining

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:09

everything out of your land. Yeah, it is. You know, bless, you know, the beaver folks, I'll tell you if they're beavers, but I think the more we go into place, so if you, the more organic matter you get, the more carbon you've got in the soil the more water you you hold so for me it's almost like water storage is the biggest factor and so I think working getting that measured first of all so you've definitely got you know how much water you're storing on your you know and if you look in the UK at the moment the sewage companies are just putting so much sewage into the water you know rivers the rivers are low and it's just you know there's the Armageddon really like those water companies I actually worked with Southwest Water for a bit they've actually they did give me a bit of money to do some fencing but I totally ignored it because I wanted the fence in a different way but it's in their interest to get farmers to hold that water on land get it clean on land before it goes in so I think there's a huge huge opportunity there actually so water storage so basically so I think my idea would be and I was only just sort of thinking about it and I'm not is get people either long term leasing or buying land if they're buying land it would be all part of a big pool of people and hopefully they would get money for offsetting they would be getting money for carbon there would be the return of it I would be basically

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:21

leases, probably small leases and some

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:25

ecosystem services. I know that I can guarantee that I can make an income for my sheep. And it's, you know, I've only just scratched the surface of what's, you know, where I can take this. But I then also think I want to introduce cows into my system. And I think I'd use chickens, you know, like, and what I really want to move towards is like motor store growing within Woodlands. I think that's where the real, that's where we can produce huge amounts of food. So I want to focus on those things. But meanwhile, use the willow titters a way of expanding things because you know the more they just go where I'm doing stuff with the shoe there's not a willow tit in my uncle's bit but the willow tits every time you work and it's not

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:59

a canary in the coal mine but on the good side

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:03

of things yeah so willow tits in the wood it's not a big surprise in nature the idea that we have deciduous I see what happens when you just get deciduous wood without ruminants and the canopy comes over and in time it just dies

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:18

that's where the lot of the rewilding people told us like it's not like you need management like it's been managed for centuries and if we like it or not we have to take our role as the key certain species and we've been managing ruminants and you cannot just put a fence around and let everything out and magically reaches some kind of equilibrium

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:38

well because there's there's quite a few i mean these are the people who hate me most um so there's a growth of people who um they're just And people are treating them like some sort of Messiah. But I'm like, mate, like people are going to think you're a genius for 20 years, but you're going to die. And then 20 years after you're dead, people are going to realize what an idiot you were. And then like, he'll get really upset. And I said, I'll tell you what, I'll go down and take some photos. So I'll pop down and an hour later, I take the photo. You can just see it like this. It's so weird.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:12

I've thought about like how different managed woodlands, like you could, you could just show it or even listen to it like if you just listen to the incredible audio of the two forests or the two woodlands next to

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:25

each other

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:26

and I've seen there was an exhibition by of course forgot the name but he recorded a lot of nature sounds and projected it on a wall so you could see you can not only hear it but you could see where the jaguar came in and you could see because it was another line and it was a fully dark room in Milan and you could basically the full wall was of course really high really big room and you could see the sounds coming in and you could hear the difference between a forest that was even selectively cut yeah like you could not see the difference apparently on pictures the forest both look equally

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:58

healthy yeah

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:59

but you could hear the difference because it was selectively cut and there was less wildlife yeah so i think there's there's something on that sound piece as well i make it a visual again to see like we can you feel the difference immediately when you walk into there but probably it's easier to comment on twitter than it actually is to go and say okay let's look at the difference between managed and not

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:17

managed i think you're right it's quite fascinating yeah I've got a feeling my mate Bordy, when I was talking about earlier on, I think he might have sent me that actually. I

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:26

will send it to you. I will find it and put it in the links below. I'm sorry I forgot the name. It's a very famous artist for sure. The nature of sound part is... So you're going to... You have to get to big scale because otherwise you cannot participate in these schemes. But still keep it out of the corporate

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:45

hands. Because we've been farming a long time and... because we're like an established family, my granddad was so respected, but my stepdad obviously wasn't. I always say with farming, and I think a lot of people are scared about getting into farming and they think they'll be treated, but I always say with farming, and I've proven it to be honest, is if you just, obviously I do social media, but if you just keep your head down, work hard, and pay your bills on time, and you're not a twat, or you're not like, you know, you're not an idiot, after about three years people start taking you seriously and it's taken me three years and now finally people are actually okay he's alright he pays his bills you know and I think people are going to locally are beginning to and I think What's been very dramatic for me this year is my whole farm has been about drought resistance ever since the inspiration of Steve Gabriel. So the way I farm is that grass grow long, strip graze it, push it down, produce some mulch. And this year, you know, it's just so noticeable. If you drive past my landline, it's literally rained 10 days ago. Everybody else had no grass at all. Their grass is just appearing. My grass has exploded. And I've got 240 sheep on a very small farm and they've got no strip grazing and it just works it just you know so I think no farmer can know every farmer you know you keep such a lot on each other's land and I've only got tiny tractors so I can't look over hedges but all the other farmers have got huge tractors they can look at mine it's just they would have thought really strange seeing these sheep grazing but now it's just so noticeable so I think undeniable yeah I think people locally are beginning to they will start thinking I think really he's not like his stepdad he is like his granddad and I think as soon as they start thinking that I think they'll you know they'll I'll get on the side. I think this year that's, I would like to see that happen really. But it will take a lot of work. But the beauty is, because we've got this railway track, it's now all woodland. I don't need to have the land right next to me because if I've got the railway track, I can have a land that's a mile away, but it will still be connected. Connected, yeah. And the same with the River Kerry. So I think that's how, so I don't need to worry too much about the land right next to me. I just need to worry, you know, so that could be another. Is it somewhere connected to the

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:58

archery

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:59

basically? Yeah, and it would just be, if you plant the rice orchards, I mean, between me, well, I say between me and you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:05

There are a few other people

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:06

listening. When I actually walked down the track and there was a Land O'Lantern mile away, I actually saw Willow Tit in there. So they're obviously already using it. Like, you know, it's like, it's just already, you know, like... I wasn't going to tell anybody that. Maybe it was

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:22

the other one. Maybe

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:23

you didn't see it correctly. But the other thing I think in terms of investments, which I don't know why people... Yeah, so

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:31

what would you tell investors? Let's say we're not on the Oxford farming conference, which would be fun, but we're on stage at... Actually, there's an upcoming one. Probably it's out when... This will be out after that. But in Amsterdam, we're sitting on stage. A lot of bankers, investors, family offices, et cetera, that are... that follow you on Instagram or other people and what would you tell them obviously without giving investment advice but where to look and how potentially to put money to work

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:57

well I'd say firstly I look at the economic press actually the financial press and I have to say I think the standard journalism is pretty dreadful that's why we're recording this podcast it's just they just rehash press releases it just drives me wild yesterday I saw something about you need to invest in proteins what I'd say is If you don't want to invest in, if you don't think Regenerag is right, then invest your money in alternative proteins, but also invest in the pharmaceutical industry because one, it's going to lead to, I mean, it's just fat. If you eat the sludge that they're proposing you eat, then you're going to need pharmaceuticals. So those two go together. If you're not going to do that,

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:37

Basically, if you invest in that, you're creating a market for your pharmaceutical investments, which

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:42

is

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:42

a quote-unquote fair

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:44

strategy. Yeah, it's brilliant. So good luck to you. But if you actually like humanity... But don't call Matt. Now, what Noah's talking about is, they're talking about the growth in vegan food, but I think what's becoming very obvious, that without government intervention, without raising taxes for meat, lockdowns have proven that very few in the population are into the hotel So at any one time, about 1% to 2% of the population are vegan. The vegan did their own research six years ago. They never talked about it, but they did their own research. And it shows that 84% of vegans give up after one year. And I did some rough sums. So at any one time, so 1% of the population, so the population of the UK is 60 million. There's probably 1 million vegans at any one time. A year later, about, well, 840,000 of those will be ex-vegans so I reckon there's probably in the UK now about 10 million ex-vegans I think those people are wonderful they obviously care about the planet they do care about sentient beings but they've gone through the process where they're realising that actually being on the vegan diet is for some reason they've given up haven't they that market is the one that I they're the ones buying all my private sales because they're looking for incredibly ethical farming systems so I would say focus on that nobody's really I haven't heard anybody talk about it, but that's the fastest growing, most ethical market in the UK. And they don't have to eat meat, but I do think it's obvious to me that you need animal fats of some sort. So I would personally, where I would invest a lot of money

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:31

is... That's my perfect next question. What would you do? Like you would, like a billion pounds, like what would you,

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:38

how would

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:39

you

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:39

put that to work? I would get Jersey cows. I would basically arable is where we can make the most change where we're farming now we can produce really incredibly healthy livestock we can produce really healthy Jersey cows for example what you need to do when you start basically at the moment all our farming systems are separate dairy you know highland arable and it's not rocket science it's what they used to do but where I would put huge money in is mobile dairy units on arable systems and I would and it's happening in Germany there's lots of systems But to me, if you can make the dairy part of the arable system, so, you know, you're doing a re-gen ag, you're grazing your cattle, you've got a mobile system, and then, you know, to me, you can then start measuring that milk, and I'm sure from a regenerative system, it would be so, so good for you. The cattle are outside, you know, and, you know, maybe, you know, you need to work on the... Would you

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:36

then do, like, your arable system in sort of a permanent pasture way? I mean, the wild farming people, and, like, how do you make sure there is not just... left over from whatever they were growing. How do you make sure the cows get their

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:47

grass? My friends of mine have got an 800-acre arable farm in Hertfordshire. We're slowly beginning to work on getting sheep as part of their system. But you imagine any one time, you probably want to do arable for three years and you want to graze for three years. So basically, if you work down that farm... Really as

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:04

a separate, as part of the rotation, not necessarily grazing the arable.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:08

Yeah, not grazing arable. So basically, you need to have your arable legs, whatever you do to get that soil working. You need cattle to do that. You need cover crops. Get that working, have a mobile farming system so you don't be collecting the milk. They're basically regenerating the land. You don't need to use fertilizer. Those animals can be incredible. If they're the right animals, I think we need to move away from fusion and hostile. We need to move towards Jersey cattle. They're able to turn that product into something that's just incredible. I'd enough for you so I grew up with them like I probably love them a lot more than I love sheep but but I think they don't fit as an animal you know we need to go back to the animals that can turn you know all of that you know what's growing and that's why we do need to start looking towards that you know if you're going to raise cattle on those systems you know like you know like the red rings the herefords that sort of thing so basically so I've got a friend who he's called Fred Price and he really ought to interview Fred Fred's Just a genius guy, probably, I think, early 30s. Went to Oxford and Cambridge. His folks had a 200-acre arable farm. Went to Oxford and Cambridge, came back and went to the farm. His parents were horrified, but he basically became like the best. They sent him there, and then he came back. And then he came back. But he basically became the best chemical farmer. You know, he was using chemicals. His yield was going up, but he was spending more and more money. And then one year, everything just crashed. Like, yield crashed. And, you know, he was the first person talking that I ever had to talk about this. but also it's happening worldwide now where your soil just can't do that chemical process where it just, you know, it doesn't matter how much nitrogen you put on it, the soil's, you know. So then he, what he then started doing was planting herbal lays. He gets Tamworth pigs and he now, we help him, he helps his supply chain. So with me and my butcher, we set him up in a restaurant in London. They buy all his Tamworths. But now he's like five years in. It has to be seen to believe. His pigs are basically his input. So he's making money on his input. And he's now producing like heritage, world-class grains. And, you know, he is part of that sourdough, cool East London thing. So perhaps I shouldn't stag him off too much. Like a good slice of

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:24

bread with some interesting butter or some interesting baking. I mean, it's part of it, but it shouldn't only be that. Like fermentation, like we learn, happens in ruminants, which is important.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:34

But I did some sums. And this is it. Because actually, Friends of the Earth in Northern Ireland got in touch with me about three years ago. They wanted to talk about something. So I ended up doing some sums for them. And this needs to go to the economists out there. Obviously, you need to, you know, take, I wouldn't say the pinch of salt, but I looked at how many pigs Fred was producing from his land. And then at the moment, we've got 9 million pigs in factories, which I uphold. And it's got, you know, that's, but if 20% of arable farmers in the UK did what Fred did and used pigs as part of their rotation, then those 9 million pigs, could be taken from factories and put on land. And then I think in time, you're gonna realize that because he's not paying for chemicals, pigs are his chemical, they're always fertilizer. He's actually making money from his input. So in time, I think you're gonna- Making money from your

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:28

inputs. I mean, yeah. That's the one, I wouldn't say one of the trick, but how do you switch that conversation to how do you grow as much food for people without all the inputs or actually making money from inputs which is the ruminant or the pig or and but that's such a mental flip that that's gonna like you have to see it to believe it and then do the numbers and then still probably many people would say that's impossible it sounds so good to be true

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:55

thinking about it's even funnier flip is what what we sort of say down here is i want to try and talk the farmer's language you know and the whole regen thing like farmers down here they just raise their eyebrows and so what we think is i think the moment i'm regenerating my land i think my granddad did these things my stepdad even worse i'm now using in the sheep to regenerate it but once it's regenerated when it's working I'm then moving to like low input farming so basically spending as little as you can the less you spend the less you need to make but now I'm suddenly thinking like you could be a high input but you know like the pigs because you've got pigs on it it's actually a high input but it's just not one that you're paying for do you know what I mean we're talking about a low input system but actually at the moment I've got 240 sheep but it looks like too many. But every day, because they're quite big, they're probably pooing out six kilos of poo a day.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:52

Yeah, so the input, but of course the input doesn't come from outside your farm gate, which you didn't put. But I think that's the... We forget that in agriculture, if you run it like a business, we would never ask that question to a bike factory. I have said it on the podcast. People are not going to say, yeah, you already mentioned it. But you would never ask the question, how can you squeeze out as many bikes? It doesn't matter your input cost. It doesn't matter your labor cost. labor costs it doesn't matter if you have to run 24 7 whatever diesel generator you have to put on it doesn't matter like we only want to know your output and somehow in farming like the number of bikes yeah and bikes and somehow in farming we always ask only that question we never ask but actually what did it cost to produce this and how far did it come from or yeah the environmental cost the financial cost that just the the issue of having all these lorries come on your on your land to bring stuff and to then you have to get on your big tractor to to ride it out like it's it is input and output and and And we never talk about input. We only ever talk about the output, which is ridiculous from an environmental and from an economic perspective. And apparently you run systems, you are able in general, the general you, that are way less input or even zero with really good and amazing output that we find difficult to believe and does really good margins.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:03

When I started three years ago, I wouldn't dare have more than like 100 sheep strip grazing. Which is interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:13

You're like this whole feeding the world thing. Like there's a limit. It's, it's, it's like we say much land is, is understocked and overgrazed, but it turns out to be really true. Like there's so much more possible than.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:25

I've now got 240 sheep and I'm actually, and that's after a drought. I can actually go up by another 60. Like my land, you know, I say, well, I mean, I think there's some questions you asked me before thing. And one of the questions I, one of the things I want to change the most is a, either journalist. You really like

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:43

bring it up. bringing up every question. It's amazing. You're doing my job. What would you change? Great question, Matt. Thank you. It's going to be my final one because I was starting to approach the longest interview I ever did, but it's absolutely fascinating. So thank you for making it until now, if you're still listening. What would you love to change? There's

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:01

two things. One is either, not just the journalists and the economic press, but journalists either need to sort themselves out and actually start thinking critically rather than reading press releases because all we just need to ignore mainstream media because they're just, they're just at the moment, journalism's gone very wrong and they're just, they're so like obsessed with where they are in the, you know, like, when I see in the food industry, you know, bless them, some are friends and they know I say things like this, but you still need to start getting on board. You need to think critically about everything that's out. So on that sort of point, you know, so if the journalists aren't going to sort this stuff out, you just need to start looking elsewhere for information. But the thing is, what's happening at the moment farming and everywhere is everyone's talking like peer-reviewed things like so I you need to start where's the

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:50

peer-reviewed papers

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:50

yeah yeah it's all the time where's that peer-reviewed I'm like mate like you're not being worried I've got six plants growing and that one I've got 140 they said no but I need to get statistical data I'm like mate like here's a photo go with two

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:01

people look at each other you are your peers you're reviewing and look at the difference

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:05

so I think like we've got to stop I think we do actually need to listen too far we need to trust the judgment of what farmers are seeing with their own eyes and if they take a photo you know like and I mean I've just taken base measurements from mine but we need you need to start realizing farmers all we actually want to do is feed people and actually earn enough money to live like we're not like we don't actually want to destroy the planet like like start working with us and trusting us because like I you know I sit there probably four or five hours a day just watching my land and walking and like no one knows that better like I know that I know what's going on so start start trusting what farmers are saying and one thing I would say is my granddad was told to feed the nation and he did it and within two years he turned the farmer out. Farmers are capable of changing things incredibly quickly like if they need to and everyone's on side like farmers can do it but we need to agree on we need to agree on how much carbon are we storing in soils because that's the base thing at the moment. One science says what people are saying he doesn't store much carbon he only puts so much and other people other scientists are saying we're storing loads we need to get that right first of all are we are we actually storing carbon how much are they storing can we agree that if they're not we'll get rid of them we'll eat fake meat but if we are if that's how we want to get carbon from up there down the gland we need to then work out how to do that so

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:34

And how does that, because you mentioned before the water piece is almost more interesting or more, it seems to be easier to measure water holding capacity. You see all these great videos on YouTube and Instagram of very dry land, recently grazed land, like a cup of water upside down, see how fast it goes in. I mean, that's, you don't need a paper for that. Anybody can see what's your, at least what's your infiltration rate is very easy to do. Like, do you see that as a, as an easier in than all this, this fluffy carbon talk that

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:04

I think it's, I mean, there is no drone technology where they can measure, they can send things up. I think these things are actually all incredibly measurable now. But this is...

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:18

They are. You can see infiltration rates. You can see vegetation. You can see

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:23

quite a lot. So my granddad, I literally had a talk last night. There's a guy who's quite hopeful. George Monbiot had a bit of a blow up last week. There's another chap called Guy Schwa They may be lovely people, but I'm not a big fan. Anyway, they started talking to me and all these people just piled in and started having a go at me. And they're like, mate, how do you know you're holding more water? And I'm like, well, I walk every bit of land every day. I know. But I said also, my granddad put these drainage pipes in. When I started in the winter, all the water would drain and it would all come out. I could see it. But now after three years, every year, less and less and less and less. I couldn't It has to go somewhere. Like, yeah, can you, like, if it's not, yeah, if it's not coming off there, it's staying on there, like, you know, believe me if you want, but like, I'm telling you, that's, it's obvious in my land. So they say for every percentage increase in organic matter, you heard 20,000, I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, but you heard like 20,000 more liters and it's just true. Like, you're within three years and I've done nothing that no one else can do. All I've done is strip grade sheet. That's all I've done. Nothing, you know, now we've got electric fence and I've done nothing on my farm that no one else in the whole country could do but the amount of water is now holding and it's obvious from the start you know my reefs are still getting that water that was the main you know the total surface is dry but they're getting you know like it's just

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:52

and you're getting phone calls now of your neighbours like are they I mean they look over the fence over the hedgerows on their big tractors but are they starting to knock your door like we thought you were crazy but your

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:03

grass looks amazing I have started seeing there's a dairy farm offset and this neighbor started strip grazing their dairy cows and I've never seen that in like 40 years so yeah it's quite interesting and I think it's very

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:15

interesting there's a satellite picture of I think it's Mark Shepard's farm from above obviously and you can see which neighbors have started putting key line design in like it's amazing you can

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:25

see

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:26

you see his farm and then you see the others and you see where it stops like exactly and everything is straight again and then you see these really nice curves and so you can see this thread almost and of course if you talk to him you would know exactly which ones are where and how etc but you can see this impact probably on yours as well you could see over the next years you can see how this like the the greener grass and the better growth grass because that all you can measure from satellite

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:49

what would be more interesting is so i used to play cricket i don't know where you are cricket but like i used to play not a lot i used to play for local side 30 years ago and for 25 years i was in london i then came back and started playing for them three years ago and they're all she farmers and they like put up with me for three years they actually they you know they see my Instagram they call me like the Instagram farmer but they actually I did an event on my wood like an American company came over to the banquet and there was some tickets I invited some of the cricket guys along and genuinely like they were blown away like they just I mean you see this is a bit like I've had chefs I've had I can get anybody who doesn't know farming to come to my land and If I want to, I can get them thinking I'm a genius and the best farmer in the world, right? But it's not true. But your neighbor farmers and your cricket mates are different. Yeah, within a nanosecond, by the time they park their cars and walk towards me, they already knew if I was a portrait or not. You know, they just, it's like, is he making money? And I had so much grass and I was doing it so differently and like the bits and their grass had stopped growing by then and I, because I'd, you know, it was just all day and one of them was so, and I didn't really think about it. The next day, I was also cutting hay and the guy said you know how much you know he actually very kindly got his mate to bail it all out and we got a really good yield on my hay and he just said something so nice on you know basically like you know mate actually you're a pretty good farmer that was all it took obviously I feel emotional that's all it took was him like an actual farmer to go actually mate like you're pretty good like it was

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:25

like the imposter syndrome

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:26

was solved yeah but to be honest I know it sounds cocky, but I just know it's working. You know what I mean? I don't... It was lovely to hear from them, but I sort of... You know, when I was doing the restaurants and chefs, I knew it was bullshit. I knew it was nonsense. I knew how good I was, but it wasn't very good. But this, I just... I'm not saying I could be good on another farm, but on my family farm, I know I couldn't be trying harder to be better. If I went to another farm, who knows? I'd probably cock it up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:00

We'll see that now with the railway line. How that's going to go. I want to thank you so much for your time, Matt, to come on. You have a lot to do. You need to spend another four or five hours today looking at your land, which is very important. I'm not making a joke here. I'm not being cynical. It's fundamental because that observation leads to i mean the results and the flavor we we just heard about but i want to thank you so much for coming on i don't think it's going to be the last time i really enjoyed it it's probably the longest interview we ever did but with really really good reasons and so many other rabbit holes to unpack so i want to thank you for now i will put all the links below on of your social media for people to follow to come and visit to to see what's possible and to taste what's possible and to understand and to to listen to farmers because they are the only ones that really know the land so thank so much for your time for all that you do and for taking the time to come here and share your story

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:52

thank you

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:59

Thanks again and see you next time.