Farm Gate

Welcome to News Week from 8point9.com - I'm ffinlo Costain. We've got two great interviews for you, each about really important subjects. Now, you may noticed that the normal Farm Gate podcast has become a little more intermittent while we've been getting 8.9 hectares up and running - please do stay subscribed as we have some fantastic interviews and discussions planned for the coming weeks and months. But - to make life easy - our News Week programme and Farm Gate will both be available for you on the same channel. THIS WEEK - Glastir Organic funding - Patrick Holden - and nutrient neutrality - Dr Gabriel Connor-Streich. MORE NEWS AT 8point9.com

This is the audio version of a webinar in which the chief executives of RSPB, Soil Association and Nature Friendly Farming Network discuss the Consensus for Food, Farming and Nature - hosted by Farm Gate, which is now part of 8point9.com Panellists: Helen Browning - Chief Executive, Soil Association Beccy Speight - Chief Executive, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Martin Lines - Chief Executive, Nature Friendly Farming Network Panel chair - ffinlo Costain, Editor, 8point9.com Find out more about the Consensus - https://www.foodfarmingnature.org/ Poll results from webinar 1. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Ecological security is essential for food production, human wellbeing & prosperity Results: 100% agreement with 91% Strongly Agree and 9% Agree 2. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: New technology will have the most important role in helping the agriculture sector meet net zero Results: 5% strongly agree 19%agree 32% neutral 32% disagree 12% strongly disagree 3. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: The UK Government has overlooked the link between food and a resilient society Results: 66% Strongly agree 24% agree 7% neutral 4% disagree

An investigation by Lighthouse Reports has targeted the powerful European farming lobby group, Copa-Cogeca, which they say “is losing legitimacy even as it stymies the EU’s green agenda and hoovers up public funds.” In this programme we'll explore issues raised by the Lighthouse Reports investigation - and think about the legitimacy and the policy role of the National Farmers' Union, the largest farmers' organisation in the United Kingdom. ffinlo Costain is by Thin Lei Win, a co-author of the report - and by Jimmy Woodrow, the executive director of Pasture for Life in the UK.

ffinlo Costain talks to Chris Smaje about his new book, Saying NO to a farm-free future. Smaje's response to George Monbiot's Regenesis is a well-mannered treatise that outlines coolly and specifically why the Guardian columnist's prescription for the food system is just completely wrong. Smaje, an academic, farmer and author of A Small Farm Future, is one of the few voices to publicly challenge Monbiot on the future of food and farming (and the restoration of nature). Responding to Monbiot’s portrayal of an urban, high-energy, industrially manufactured food future as the answer to our current crises, and its unchallenged acceptance within the environmental discourse, Smaje was compelled to challenge Monbiot’s evidence and conclusions. At the same time, Smaje presents his powerful counterargument – a low-carbon agrarian localism that puts power in the hands of local communities, not high-tech corporates. Saying NO to a farm-free future is a defence of agroecological, small-scale farming and a robust critique of an industrialized future, and is released in the UK on the 28th of June. Farm Gate is now part of the 8point9.com news channel.

In this panel session we discuss a new report, Natural Capital: what farmers and policy makers need to know, which seeks to understand how new and emerging markets in natural capital fit into a changing landscape for farmers. The report was commissioned by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission – it was written by Professor Fergus Lyon and Dr Amy Burnett from Middlesex University – and it was supported by the Prince’s Countryside Fund. ffinlo Costain, Chief Editor of 8point9.com, is joined by: Professor Fergus Lyon – author of the report – and director of the Centre for Enterprise, Environment and Development Research at Middlesex University. Lucy Bates -co-lead for the Farming Transition Programme at the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. And Charlie Davis, a partner at Sylvestris Land Management, a land and rural business consultancy specialising in environmental land management.

At the UK prime minister’s summit this week a package of measures to support British farming was unveiled. But the summit failed to address the enormous existing and future fragility in Britain’s food system – or its impact on the natural world, public health, global supply chains or indeed the wellbeing of those actually living and working in the countryside. What should have been on the table at the prime minister’s Downing Street Food Summit? Our panel: Martin Lines, Chair, Nature Friendly Farming Network Phil Stocker, Chief Executive, National Sheep Association Natalie Bennett, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, Green Party Sue Pritchard, Chief Executive, Food, Farming & Countryside Commission Rebecca Mayhew, Old Hall Farm, Pasture for Life Ben Reynolds, Deputy Director, Sustain Dan Parker, Chief Executive, Veg Power Chaired by ffinlo Costain, Chief Editor, 8.9ha

George Eustice has been the Conservative MP for Camborne and Redruth since 2010. He was a Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2015 to 2020 - and served as the Secretary of State at Defra from 2020 to 2022. Mr Eustice has been the longest serving minister at Defra in the post-referendum period, providing a relatively rare point of consistency and stability in what was a time of substantial disruption in British politics. In this podcast Mr Eustice discusses his time in government, with the Chief Editor of https://8point9.com, ffinlo Costain.

Outwintering your cattle herd in an agroecological farm system can reduce both costs and environmental impacts - but while ever more producers are taking this approach it's still far from common place. In this programme we discuss how to design an outwintering system that maintains productivity and ensures good cattle health and welfare. ffinlo Costain is joined by Silas Hedley-Lawrence and Clare Hill from FAI Farms in Oxfordshire.

While regenerative agriculture itself isn't new, popular interest and the increasingly widespread deployment of regenerative principles, is a product of a global conversation that has taken place largely within the last decade. Despite that, regenerative farming has already become mainstream, with large businesses and corporations investing in research and embedding ambitious regenerative targets, and even government ministers urging producers to take up regenerative methods. So what happens next - what does the next decade look like for regenerative agriculture? ffinlo Costain is joined by Caroline Grindrod, founder of Roots of Nature, Sue Pritchard, chief executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, and by Jonty Brunyee, the Head of Farming and Food at FarmED.

Wilder Doddington is at the start of a hundred year project to bring more nature back to the Doddington Estate - working to restore ecosystems to benefit people and nature.  In this programme ffinlo Costain is joined by Wilder Doddington's Isobel Wright and the independent farm advisor, Liz Genever, who's working with Isobel and advising on cattle management.  The conversation ranges from the exciting activity at Wilder Doddington to a discussion about some of the more controversial aspects of the rewilding movement.