By Holly Beatty
As the new NFWAG placement student, I started my first week attending Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture festival, at Lannock farm in Hertfordshire. The event hosts over 10,000 attendees; farmers, growers and anyone interested in the agri-food and environment sector. The 2 day ‘festival’ is to learn the theory and practical applications of conservation and regenerative agricultural systems. This is delivered via talks and walks from innovators, researchers and fellow farmers.
Groundswell is “By Farmers, For Farmers”, therefore event considers all aspects of the farm business, not only the environment, but the economic and political implications involved. The main aim of Groundswell is to celebrate nature and agriculture with the paramount take away being that you cannot have one without the other, both aspects must work together to create a viable future. There are 10 different speakers zones, each with a particular focus, I particularly enjoyed the talks in the Grass and Agroforestry tent. The information I learned throughout the 2 days I look forward to applying within my year at FWAG.
On Wednesday, the event was opened by the Prince of Wales, who related that “Regenerative agriculture is not a fringe but must be a foundation stone of British agriculture”. HRH opened the event before Gabe Brown, the keynote speaker of the event, kicked it all off. Unfortunately, I missed this Very Special Guest, to go to a talk about Milk!, by Matthew Evans, which although it wasn’t HRH, it was very informative, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing all about the original superfood. And again, on Thursday the Duchess of Edinburgh dropped by, again I missed that too- too busy on a Dung Beetle safari.
For those who wanted to explore Lannock Farm there were safari events, FWAG East hosted a pond safari and demonstrated the restoration of a ghost pond on site and the ecological benefits it already is bringing to the site within less than 2 years of the project. The Silvo-Arable walk was also great to see, this was a new term for me- but essentially Agro-forestry. This combines afforestation along with food production or in some cases can create a new stream of food production. The benefits of such systems are incredible to the ecosystem, by helping to regulate the micro-climate and develop the habitat available on the farm. This tied in with the previous talk I had attended about Trees and Water Management, they described trees are the ‘Moderator’ in farming by reducing the environmental extremes, they slow the flow of water in high rainfall, reducing flood peaks by 20% as well as hydraulic redistribution, their extensive root network is able to divert water to the driest areas.
One of the stars of the show was Dung Bettles, our regenerative allies and how a healthy dung beetle population could save the agricultural industry £367 million, this led into my Dung Beetle safari walk, hosted by the Regenerative Vet, Claire Whittle, who said that each cow pat can help to support 1000 insects, which across one year a single cow could support 2 million insects. The decline in dung beetle populations can be attributed to the anthropology of farming: increased use of veterinary pharmaceuticals, increased concentrated feed stuff, and indoor housing of livestock.
In the evening, they offered musical entertainment, from Glastonbury to Groundswell they were joined by Andy Cato from Groove Armada, which I hear was a fantastic evening of good food and fun.
Groundswell combines traditional farming along with future thinking farmer, Regen Ag is nothing radical but rather a simpler, more holistic approach to agriculture, or in many cases the ways in which our grandparents would have farmed. For those who have considered going but haven’t yet made it, I’d highly recommend. As a young person starting out within the industry I found the event really inspiring and encouraged to be surrounded by some of the forerunners and top innovators and future colleagues with the sector.