“The only person that can make a difference is the farmer. The person who makes the decisions about what happens on the land is the only person that can save this planet.”
In Somerset, a large rural county in England’s South West, ¾ of the land is taken up by farming. The spacious wetland Levels that offset the county’s undulating hills are close to sea level and often submerged below water where historically – pre-Roman drainage - the area was awash and inhabitants boated between hill communities. In this rainy region, intensive agriculture practices leave soil irreparably compacted causing flooding, sediment run-off and pollution.
Across the 75% farms comprising grasslands, however, a renaissance is quietly brewing. Reinvigorated traditional agricultural practices focus on the long-term sustainability of the land. Jen Hunter and Andy Wear of Fernhill Farm are leading the charge with their ecologically-sound farm business comprising livestock, wool shop, education and events venue – all with nature at front and centre.
“Nature isn’t tidy. It has as much right to roam as everything else on this planet”
Fernhill are pioneers of sustainable agroecology. Andy found the derelict 160-acre farm in 1997 and set about transforming the site. Buildings were renovated with reclaimed materials and insulated with Fernhill fleece; heating is homegrown logs and solar; waste water is naturally purified and recycled with willow. 6000 sheep and 40 cattle now roam the fields, and pigs inhabit the woodland. 20,000 visitors attend open days, wool workshops, festivals and weddings each year. It’s a breath-taking, all-encompassing sustainability operation that clearly required visionary thinking and a dedication to the land.
For Jen, intimacy with the natural surroundings is absolutely key to their work. “That’s the only way you learn,” she says; “Just being on your land and looking at it.”
This is why the pair decided, in 2017, to retrain in Holistic Management and Regenerative Agriculture with the Savory Institute: the organisation feeds vital data back to inform their land and animal management. Discovering Savory was a ‘coming home’ moment: “When we suddenly came across holistic management we thought ‘We’re already doing that! It’s not just extensive farming anymore – it’s now got a name!’”
The Institute’s Ecological Verified Outcome (EVO) scheme collects data annually for 5 years to measure land health benefits; increasing presence of plant species, invertebrates and soil health qualities, for example, provide concrete evidence of regeneration which allows them to join the Institute’s Land to Market platform, the ‘world’s first outcome-based sourcing solution (connecting) conscientious brands, retailers and consumers directly to supply derived from land verified to be regenerating.’
Fernhill have already received empirical confirmation that environmental health is increasing on-farm. Government botanists tasked with official biodiversity reporting found the farm is gaining species: 130 were observed per 1 km² where typically a conventional farm reports 50-60 and an arable farm only around 10 species. Jen nods to their no-till approach: “As soon as you drop the plough you kill the soil food web and everything else disappears.
Grass is always moist, and soil underneath a dense layer of sward is the right temperature. A ploughed field is dry and dusty, it’s the wrong temperature and it leaches carbon. Without plants there’s no photosynthesis, so no sequestration.”
“Our Regenerative Agriculture systems mimic what large herbivores have always done. The electric fence we put round them is the wolf that keeps them all in one space.”
Allan Savory, the Institute’s founder, modelled his whole-system approach on the predator/prey relationships with which grasslands co-evolved. Mobs of animals are given a small strip of grass to consume over a short period before being moved on to a fresh patch. Sheep are moved every 3-4 days while cows – Fernhill’s “big girls” – require a fresh area every day. The animals eat or squash down the grass; every blade left behind will photosynthesise, plants retain energy for long root growth which combats erosion, and carbon remains in the ground.
The relationship between grasslands and herbivores is an ancient and mutually-beneficial one, says Jen: “Animals leave behind nutrients, their poo, wee and saliva interacts with the grass, microbes drip off their coat when it rains. The system needs saliva, dead skin, sweat, and all these lovely nutrients - our soil’s have always had that here.
The key is how long the animals interact with a piece of land. Extending Counting the non-grazing days allows plants to recover and mature.”
Andy is a lifelong shepherd and natural philosopher who had an organic ethos from the outset: “I’ve never applied any fertiliser - it grows too lush a grass. Animals like a variety of feeds and often eat the hedge first before touching anything in the field because there’s diversity and medicinal plants there.” He suggests regenerative farmers should receive a benefit for the ecosystem services their animals provide - “If I put my stock on an intensive arable unit they will be excreting good biome on to it. I think I should get a payment for that” - referring to nomadic pastoralists, historically paid to bring animals on to depleted land to graze, trample and leave behind nutritious dung. Farming technologists at a recent conference met his idea with astonishment as this was aligned to a new research project of theirs.
The suggestion ties neatly into the English government’s proposals for a new Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMs) as the backbone of post-CAP agricultural policy following EU-exit. ‘Public payment for public goods’ would see subsidies given for on-farm environmental improvements. However, the scheme lacked detail and is now in danger of being eroded; and recent rejection by MPs of nature, climate change and food standards protections - called “the biggest betrayal to British farming since the civil war” - suggests the environment may take a backseat in new policy after all. U-turns have been made before though!
In the face of ongoing uncertainty regarding the future for British farmers, it’s unsurprising that Jen and Andy are sceptical about Westminster’s discourse around agriculture: “We try to be aware of it, but not let it dictate to us. We’re probably a little bit rebellious, a little anarchistic when it comes to being told….”
They remain ardently uncompromising in their farming principles, suggesting the only way to make an environmental difference is to patronise Regenerative systems. The supply chain certainly has a significant role to play. Footwear brand Timberland has committed to using leather from regenerative farms and is co-funding the Savory Institute EOV scheme. Wrangler recently commited to sustainable cotton sourcing by 2025 and sponsors farmer workshops in soil health. Sustain, the UK’s foremost campaigners for sustainable food and farming, emphasise the need to support local and British food producers for better animal welfare, land stewardship and climate action, where policy support is lacking.
Jen is looking to expand her responsible consumer base for Fernhill wool products. The flock is blade-shorn by Andy to ensure the best possible wellbeing for the sheep by being able to leave more wool on the sheep, and the essential lanolin layer left intact offers greater protection for the impacts of cold weather where machine-shearing crops the fleece to such an extent the animal suffers the impacts of cold weather, thunderstorms or intense sunshine.
Andy is an award-winning shearer and has his moccasins on, sheep splayed and fleece off in under 4 minutes. It’s beautiful to watch. Jen is an expert wool handler, sorting the fleece into grades for different purposes. Bulk orders for yarns, insulation and felt come from the commercial Romney X Shetland flock; the speciality and handcraft market is supplied with lustre long wool fibres from Teeswater and Leicester types. A Nuffield scholar of global wool industry trends in 2014, Jen is researching inter-breeding for multi-functionality – “looking at the genetics to create a multi-purpose breed so there’s some more income from wool. Traditionally in this country 90% of the income in sheep is from meat.” She hopes to reposition wool as a primary product in the UK, rather than a by-product of the meat industry.
For Jen “a main driver is passing on a skill.” She is hoping to establish seeking funding for a Wool School pilot project, providing 6-week internships covering blade shearing, wool handling, washing, carding and spinning, and crafts such as dyeing and needle felting. “An whole introduction to wool – practical workshops showing what we can do with natural fibres to add value at farm level without the need for chemical interventions.”
The local wool ecology is picking up with recent funding of the South West England branch of Fibershed, a worldwide initiative born in California in 2010 that has energised interest in the soil-to-soil textile movement. It aims to rejuvenate regional fibre systems to combat a destructive global system that pollutes environments and contributes heavily to climate change. Fernhill supplies fleece to the Bristol Cloth which is sent off for spinning, travels back to Bristol for natural over-dyeing, then over the road across the city to the Weaving Mill to be woven finished; it’s a tiny operation at fledgling stage. Jen puts the realities of the global textile system into context to suggest the local Fibershed should encompass the whole country, rather than splitting into regional branches:
“We’re so small compared to California. There’s currently only one option to wash and spin wool in the South West so we’re limited as to what we can do here. The Bristol Cloth fleeces are sent up to Yorkshire for spinning – which is absolutely no distance at all when considering the majority of wool growing countries Australia and New Zealand have little if any wool processing plants so everything goes back and forth to China and back again. The distance between South and North of England is nothing compared to the average footstep of an average (wool or synthetic) garment.”
Sustainable fashion and fibres certainly seem to be on the rise, while a pandemic-induced resurgence of handicrafts and homegrown lifestyles suggest the time is ripe for Jen’s Products with Provenance. Fernhill’s own brand of holistic education will continue to enlighten and inspire with the beauty and abundance of their alternative. The rebels see a rising interest in Regenerative Agriculture and are hoping to emerge ahead of the curve:
“I remember we were once thought of as too traditional with our extensive nomadic ways, now its seen as revolutionary and we’ve done nothing different for years. Hardly anything has changed except maybe our understanding of what our regenerative journey feels like ! the world is catching up…”
https://www.arc2020.eu/uk-old-and-new-somersets-regenerative-renaissance/
https://www.arc2020.eu/uk-old-and-new-somersets-regenerative-renaissance/