Nature Friendly Farming Podcast: Recent Episodes
Ben Eagle, Will Evans
Join us our hosts, Ben Eagle and Will Evans, as they chat with nature-friendly farmers on how they are tackling climate change, biodiversity recovery and sustainable food production. #RethinkFarming
The new season of the Nature Friendly Farming Podcast is dedicated to exploring the big issues around agriculture in Northern Ireland, in association with Danske Bank and recorded at its headquarters in Belfast.
In this episode, NFFN NI manager Cormac Dolan is joined by farmers Bronagh O'Kane and Jonny Blair to discuss soil health, low-input farming and the journey towards reducing reliance on artificial fertiliser. They explain how growing grass with little or no fertiliser is possible, why cutting back needs to happen gradually, and how healthier soils can improve both farm resilience and financial performance.
Bronagh and Jonny also reflect on the challenges of changing long-established farming practices, including the role of succession and the pressures of doing things differently from previous generations. Packed with practical insights and honest experiences, this episode offers valuable advice for farmers considering their own journey towards lower-input, more nature-friendly farming.
The new season of the Nature Friendly Farming Podcast is dedicated to exploring the big issues around agriculture in Northern Ireland, in association with Danske Bank and recorded at its headquarters in Belfast.
In this first episode, NFFN NI manager Cormac Dolan is joined by NFFN NI steering group farmer Helen Keys and Chris Shannon, who runs a software company and co-founded an organisation supporting entrepreneurs to meet social and environmental challenges. They discuss what it means for farmers to see themselves as entrepreneurs, how innovation in techniques and practices can be encouraged within the sector and how issues such as launches and risks should be managed. Helen and Chris also talk about the cultural and practical barriers that still exist and prevent farmers trying out new approaches and offer some practical tips for farmers on how they can create time and space for thinking about innovating and changing the way they work.
Helen farms with her husband Charlie just outside Cookstown in County Tyrone. Having previously been home to mixed, dairy and suckler beef farming, the main output is currently flax which is grown in nature-friendly ways and sold under the name Mallon Linen. She also works to encourage entrepreneurship with universities and businesses and has supported a number of start-ups in their journey.
Chris co-founded Stardium, a software company that helps organisations to modernise in ways that support entrepreneurship, and is also a co-founder along with Helen of Venture Folk, a social enterprise that delivers projects tackling societal and environmental issues.
The Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) is a UK-wide, farmer-led membership organisation which supports thousands of farmers in their journeys towards working in ways that reduce their dependence on artificial and chemical inputs and put nature at the heart of food production. It hosts knowledge sharing events for farmers to learn from their peers while lobbying for food and farming policies from governments across the UK and the supply chain which support farmers to work in nature-friendly and regenerative ways.
In this bonus episode we focus on the question of how best to tackle the big climate issues of our time on a practical local level?
Hosts Will Evans and Ben Eagle are joined by three guests – Jenny Phelps MBE who is Senior Farm Conservation Adviser at FWAG; Fiona Galbraith who is the Founding Director of RuralLink which helps people get into land based careers as well as a former Project Lead for the GREAT Project on Rural Facilitators, Mentors and New Entrants; and Ian Simpson who is a founder member of the community led Bledington Flood Group, committed to preventing flooding in Bledington, a Cotswold village on the border of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
Integrated Local Delivery website
Animation about integrated local delivery framework
Rural Facilitator Training
Rural Link website
FWAG South West
In this episode we look at the catchment based approach and how you could train to be a facilitator to bring local people, farmers and organisations together in your local area to tackle the issues that your area faces as a result of climate change.
Ben and Will are joined by Sue Pritchard, Chief Executive of The Food Farming & Countryside Commission (FFCC). The FFCC is an independent UK charity whose mission is to find radical and practical ways to improve climate, nature, health, wellbeing and rural economies across all four of the home nations; England, Wales, Scotland and NI. The organisation commissions and conducts research and reports relating to agroecology and local food systems, hoping to influence policy reform and future policy development.
Sue has also been an organic livestock farmer at Llananant Farm in the heart of Monmouthshire, Wales for over twenty years. Having an extended family full of agricultural workers and smallholders in the Welsh Valleys, Sue had spent many years dreaming of owning a farm before joining forces with her miner father to make the move into agriculture in 2001. She has a herd of Hereford suckler cattle that she uses to produce high-quality, pasture-fed beef.
This episode focuses on the final section of the Nature Friendly Farming Network's Rethink Farming report: Prosperity. Will, Ben and Sue discuss the importance of professor Tim Benton's statement from the report; "over the next decade, the profitability of sustainable agriculture will become increasingly apparent – especially in the UK as public monies invested in agriculture change, where perhaps only those farms that truly value natural capital will survive".
Sue also shares her opinions and experiences on valuing a "generative" mindset over an "extractive" mindset to help run a flourishing, profitable and sustainable farming business that reduces reliance on fluctuating input prices, while nourishing the environment that feeds into it.
Ben and Will are joined by Jenny Phelps MBE who is a senior farm conservation advisor for the Gloucestershire Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) and guest lecturer at the Royal Agricultural University.
Jenny has over 30 years of experience in giving on-farm advice and has been with FWAG for 10 years. She leads many different projects, including the Upper Thames Catchment Based Approach and Defra's Payments for Ecosystem Services Pilot.
Several years back, she developed the integrated local delivery framework with the support of Countryside and Community Research Institute and Natural England. The framework puts the emphasis on local knowledge and draws together funding and support from multiple sources to put into projects that improve the environment and make local communities more resilient for the future.
This big picture thinking episode looks at managing land across the wider landscape and Jenny shares her experience of how landscape-scale projects rely on local communities and their resource, knowledge and connectivity to the land.
Ben and Will head to Aberdeenshire to speak to first-generation farmer, grazier and NFFN Scotland Steering Group member Nikki Yoxall.
From agroecology to agroforestry, Nikki shares how an agroecological approach can go beyond food production and how building community can help manage a wider landscape. She shares her journey into farming, a decision that came after working as Head of Department at an agricultural college in England and that brought her and her husband to Scotland and their 18-acre farm, Howemill.
Nikki talks about her introduction to holistic farm management as the gateway to owning Shetland heifers through pasture-fed, low-input systems and her experience of entering the sector as a new entrant farmer.
Ben and Will head to County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, to talk about all aspects of food quality with farmer, Helen Keys, and to hear about her exciting business, SourceGrow, a platform that helps farmers decide what to grow and supports local by allowing restaurants to find suppliers.
Helen also shares how she, and her partner, Charlie, are working to restore locally-grown textiles by bringing Irish linen back to its roots. In the past, Belfast was known as "Linenopolis" but in recent decades linen production had all but disappeared. Now, Mallon Linen are In their fourth year of growing flax for linen as the first commercial producers in over 40 years.
Helen's Rethink Farming Q&A:
https://www.nffn.org.uk/rethink-farming-helen-keys/
In this episode, Ben & Will speak with Aylwin Pillai, an environmental lawyer and partner in family-run Kinclune Estate and Organic Farm in Angus, Scotland. Aylwin shares her family's farming history, their agroecological approach, why she's an activist for nature-friendly farming & the important role small farms have in advocating for changes in land use. She shares how Kinclune is tackling climate change, biodiversity restoration and carbon emissions through a holistic approach that includes woodland maintenance, agroforestry and conservation grazing.
Join NFFN as a free public or farmer member.
In this episode, we focus on the water section of NFFN’s ‘Rethink Farming’ report by speaking to Sam Kenyon in North Wales. Sam farms next to the River Elway in Denbighshire and we hear all about how she’s taking a proactive and nature-friendly approach to water management, and how farmers should be planning for a changing climate.
Support Sam's crowdfunding campaign: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/natural-flood-management-wet-woodland
Sam's Rethink Farming case study: https://www.nffn.org.uk/rethink-farming-sam-kenyon/
For World Soil Day, Ben and Will are digging into all things SOIL with William Scale, a farmer with 20 years experience of no-tillage farming in Pembrokeshire. They dive into the ground beneath our feet through stories of William’s farming and why his ecological approach to land management matters to soil function.
The NFFN podcast is back! And for the first episode of series three, Ben and Will talk to arable farmer and NFFN steering group member, Patrick Barker, all about the incredible range of environmental measures he and his cousin Brian have put in place on their farm, why it’s so important that farmers engage with the public, and the what’s, why’s, and how’s of NFFN’s new report and campaign ‘Rethink Farming: A Practical Guide for Farming, Nature and climate’ which we’ll be exploring throughout this series. All this, and lots more!
In this final episode of the second series of the podcast Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet Anthony Curwen who is Managing Director of Quex Park in Kent. They learn about how Anthony's business changed from a large-scale vegetable operation to a fully diversified estate including multiple diversifications on top of the arable business.
In this episode Ben and Will are once again visiting Scotland to speak to farmer and conservationist Michael Clarke in Dumfriesshire. They hear all about his long journey into farming in his own right, the incredible range of measures he’s taken to improve biodiversity on his farm, and what the Scottish Government should be doing to support nature friendly farming.
In our latest podcast episode Ben and Will head to north Wales to speak to Gethin Owen who farms 150 acres near to the coast there. Among other things they discuss the benefits of leaving winter stubbles and growing red clover.
Hosts Ben and Will once again head over to beautiful Northern Ireland to talk to arable farmer David Sandford about his lifetime of effort to improve nature and biodiversity on his farm on the shores of Strangford Lough, some of the highly prestigious awards he’s won, and why he’s hopeful for the future.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet NFFN's Scotland Vice-Chair Phil Knott and learn about crofting and Phil's plan for the future as well as focusing on climate change resilience.
In this series we are focussing on the road to COP26 and speaking to farmers who are undertaking work to tackle the climate crisis in their own ways. In this episode Ben and Will head to Northern Ireland to talk to 1st generation farmer Charlie Cole to find out all about his incredibly diverse business, and how working with nature is central to everything he does.
In this series we are focusing on the road to COP26 and speaking to farmers who are undertaking work to tackle the climate crisis in their own ways. In this episode Ben and Will speak to Welsh farmer Tony Davies who transformed his business to focus on making it sustainable for the future in terms of climate and biodiversity but also looking to the opportunities available to ensure he remains profitable.
Where better to start the second series of the NFFN Podcast than with the man behind it all - Martin Lines? We discuss the changes he’s made on his farm in Cambridgeshire and how they've had a dramatically positive effect on nature and the profitability of his business, as well as how and why NFFN came about in the first place and where he’d like it to be in the future.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans travel to County Armagh in Northern Ireland to meet arable farmer Simon Best, where they talk about how he sells his crops to local businesses, how green waste and composting have dramatically improved his soils, environment schemes, carbon auditing, working with nature, and much more.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet farmer, acclaimed author, and member of the NFFN Scotland steering group, Patrick Laurie, to talk all about his farm in Galloway, his deep connections to the area, his book ’Native - Life in a Vanishing Landscape', and what nature means to him and his business.
In this episode hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet Polly Davies and Graeme Wilson who run a mixed organic farm in South Wales. They manage several enterprises between them but would now rather focus on improving their current business rather than starting more enterprises, hence the search for 'marginal gains'.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet multi-generation dairy farmer James Robinson, to talk all about his family business in south Cumbria, his huge social media following, and how he’s carrying on the tradition of enhancing the natural environment on his farm.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet Hilary Kehoe, Chair of the Welsh steering group of the Nature Friendly Farming Network who farms 150ha across Gwynedd and Ynys Mon (Anglesey) both at home and on nature reserves across north west Wales.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet Northern Ireland based Michael Meharg who farms Irish Moiled rare breed cattle on 250ha.
Hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans meet Denise Walton who is on the Scottish Steering Group of NFFN and farms with her family in the Scottish Borders.
In the very first episode of the NFFN podcast hosts Ben Eagle and Will Evans speak to NFFN England Chair Chris Clark about his farming life and why farmers should see nature as a shareholder in their business.