Growing Ideas: Our Visit to a Regenerative Agriculture Festival

Groundswell is a regenerative agriculture event hosted by farmers, for farmers – all taking place on a farm! 

Now in its 10th year, Groundswell has grown from just a few hundred people attending to more than 10,000, including appearances from senior ministers and leading figures in agriculture, science and policy.

It is not your traditional country show. This is an event about how we can farm differently – making a profit whilst still protecting and enhancing the environment, with good land stewardship and soil health at its heart. It’s about bringing the joy back into farming, celebrating traditional skills and marrying them with modern technology and science to make farms profitable, resilient and buzzing with biodiversity.

Regenerative agriculture is farming with these principles at its core:

• Minimise soil disturbance
• Keep the soil covered
• Maintain living roots in the soil
• Maximise plant diversity
• Integrate livestock

These principles are brought to life at the Festival through hundreds of talks, demonstrations and safaris across 19 different venues, including tents, field trials, ponds, hedges, exhibition stands and machinery demonstrations.

Our staff attended more than 30 different sessions!

These covered:

Agroforestry and silvopasture

Different ways to protect young trees

How to look after ancient trees

The benefits of hedgerows and how best to manage them

Restoring floodplain meadows

Integrating grazing animals into woodlands

Regenerating pasture with sheep

Rebuilding the British wool sector

Managing upland permanent pasture

How livestock use shade and water

Doing dairying differently

The importance of dung beetles

How farms across the UK and Europe responded to drought

The impact of agriculture on rivers

Deer management; no-fence collars

Building soil health

The value of hefted sheep flocks

The role of tenant farmers

Bringing private capital into environmental schemes

The role of blended finance - amongst many other topics!

We also heard important announcements from Emma Reynolds at Defra regarding the future of agri-environment schemes and from Katie White, Minister for Climate.

We spoke to potential funders such as Environment Bank, organisations leading the way in environmental modelling such as the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and technology providers including Land App and Soilmentor.

We looked at a range of plastic-free tree guards and supported our colleagues on the national Rivers Trust stand, providing cover while some went to watch the footy − and we also gave a talk on funding for Natural Flood Management (NFM).

We came back full of new knowledge and ideas, inspired and invigorated to carry on our mission of restoring our rivers, working with farmers and land managers, and helping make our catchments fit for the future.