Unveil: the next generation of regen - we need a coalition of the curious

Six Inches of Soil - The Podcast

This episode explores the burgeoning movement of regenerative agriculture through a panel of experts and practitioners. The hosts introduce

Key takeaways

• Groundswell has grown from 400 farmers to over 10,000 attendees in approximately one decade.
• Hannah Thorogood's journey into permaculture was heavily influenced by her studies at Manchester University and work in New Zealand.

Main topics

• Regenerative agriculture movement
• Groundschool and Groundswell origins

Notable quotes

The best time to plant a tree, 50 years ago, and the second best time is today.

Conclusion

The episode serves as an inspiring call to action for farmers and cons

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The best time to plant a tree, 50 years ago, and the second best time is today. People Speaker 7 (0:05) need to move at their own pace. Yes, we're in an environmental crisis. Yes, we're in an economic crisis. But you can't rush people through that process. Speaker 1 (0:13) I think it's an unsustainable approach to think that we can go to farmers who are doing things that are perceived to be bad. I don't believe there's any such thing as a bad farmer. and go and change the way they do things. I think the only way that we can have sustainable, resilient change is incrementally. Speaker 2 (0:30) I was talking to a cardiologist a couple of days ago, and they may be doctors for our bodies, but we farmers are doctors for the soil. It's not just food. It's about how do we want to be in the world? Can Speaker 5 (0:44) Britain be fed? by regenerative farming. Britain isn't feeding itself anyway. It suggests that we are already feeding ourselves, but we're Speaker 1 (0:53) not. That question comes up so often. Can this type of farming feed the future? The key response to a question like that is it's the only system that can. We have a lot of work to do. Speaker 8 (1:16) Well, welcome, Soulmates, to another exciting episode of Six Inches of Soul, the podcast. I'm joined, as usual, by superstar producer Claire McKenzie. Hi, Claire. Speaker 4 (1:27) Hi, Richard. Happy, here we go, T-shirt time. Speaker 8 (1:32) Happy Speaker 4 (1:33) Regenerative Farming Week, Rich. Speaker 8 (1:36) Claire's wearing her Regenerative Farming Week top with a nice tractor on it. And it says, rise, regen, repeat, which she supports. So why are you wearing Speaker 4 (1:47) that T-shirt? We are supporting a six inches of soil. So Tim Parsons, who's been on the podcast. believe i think i looked it up i think it was episode two correct and he um i was with him last week and his this is all connected with him and his green farm collective and they're about 40 farmers and the flower from a few of those farms has gone to a thing called euro style foods and they have created a product called rise flower so it's this leaflet Speaker 4 (2:24) And this is their flower. Speaker 8 (2:27) Nice. Holds up to camera picture of combine harvester harvesting flower. Yes, Speaker 4 (2:31) sorry. Speaker 8 (2:32) Wheat and flower. It's Speaker 4 (2:33) not just video. Thank you, Rich. And the interesting thing is I've dug into, I've shot two little videos, as I saw, to the founders, Tim and Jake Freestone, who's also a very experienced regenerative farmer. And so I will be putting those out on our social media for people to listen. But what I found really interesting, because obviously we've got wild farms who are phenomenal and they're very much more communicating with those of us on the street. If we're going to go and buy some bread from Waitrose or wherever we can get their lovely loaves. And so they've got exciting communication, et cetera, and working really closely with lots of farmers very well. So the difference with this is that Eurostar Foods, not the train, is something we will not see. They're part of the missing middle. because they take the flour and they have it manufactured or they sell directly to manufacturers. And so they allotted their flour. I think they're the biggest supplier of zero-zero type flour from Italy to go into pizzas. Now, the first flour ever to go into pizzas, British flour, is this rice flour. So that's a really exciting moment for Eurostar. The first time they've used it. They love the flower so much that they're sending it to their amazing restauranteurs and other manufacturers. So that's the difference. And they're trying to have full-on discussions about the importance of soil, regenerative farming, all the principles with those in these huge manufacturing companies that you are not, well, I don't know, Richard, you probably do. A lot of them are missing to most of us who go to the supermarket to shop. Speaker 8 (4:18) Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. To a consumer, it's the missing middle. You maybe know what a farmer's like, but you probably don't necessarily think about the journey from that farm to the shelf or your plate. And so I'm really pleased that they're doing this. And this whole idea of kind of putting ecology into food and helping food really lead this movement requires people like Eurostar to get involved and be that connector. And actually, with that same thought in mind, I'm off this week to travel to the other side of the world to New Zealand for really the same thing. A company over there who's leading the way in getting farms verified and measured. But it's all led by beef being consumed by a retailer in the States who really cares about all of the water and the wildlife and the nature. that is being grown at the same time as the animals are being grown. So yeah, food has to lead this for sure. As part of this whole mission, education is obviously at the heart of it. And that's really what today's episode is about. Speaker 3 (5:32) And in fact, I was at Groundswell this year. And my wife, Annie, was in the crowd as the panel I was hosting. And she asked the question, how do you make every day a groundswell day? And that's kind Speaker 8 (5:47) of what the episode is about a little bit. So who do we have as our guests coming up today, Claire? Speaker 4 (5:53) Well, we're really excited. So this is completely inspired by groundswell. And they launched ground school this year. Speaker 4 (6:04) We decided it would be wonderful, ahead of their courses starting, that we have this episode and introduce the founders. Also, we're going to meet not only the founders of Groundschool, but also the founders of Groundswell, or half of them anyway. And we also invited Hannah Thorogood, who is... Speaker 4 (6:27) Phenomenal in many, for many, many reasons. And she also very, very kindly was featured in the first teaser trailer we did pre Six Inches of Soil film. And then we have the wonderful Rachel Phillips from the Apricot Centre, an Apricot Centre with Marina, who's sadly not with us anymore, but they are featured in Six Inches of Soil. So this... I would say is really, really special to those of us been working on this project because all of the people in it enabled us to make the film supporting us, starring, giving advice. And so they are at the centre of this ground school and for a very, very good reason. They are all experts in their field, but also wonderful human beings. Speaker 8 (7:17) Yeah. And of course, John and Joanna Cherry. who are the seed that started Groundswell. And I'm really looking forward to learning about the story. And I think it started when they came over to America and went to a no-tills-on-the-plane festival. But we're really going to find out more about that, how they've grown it, and especially how can you get outside of this bubble. It's something that I think about a lot. Listen to this. podcast probably really understand all these concepts but how do we help this grow and expand and be attractive to all farmers everywhere all consumers and so that's what we hope to learn from this episode so thanks soilmates for joining us and we will Speaker 3 (8:02) see you at the end for a bit of an outro here's the episode listeners welcome to six inches of salt the podcast we've got some amazing guests for you this week and we're going to introduce them all. Rachel, do you want to introduce yourself and briefly explain how you're connected to six inches of soil? Speaker 7 (8:20) Hi, yeah, I'm Rachel. I'm the Managing Director at the Apricot Centre, which is a regenerative organic biodynamic. permaculturally designed agroecological farm in dartington it's all the words we're connected to six six inches of soil because claire came when she was recording the the documentary and interviewed marina o'connell who was the founding director who sadly passed away in 2024 and since then i've taken over looking after and stewarding the lands here at huxham's cross farm Speaker 3 (8:48) How amazing. Well, thank you for being with us today. And Hannah, coming to you next, can you explain how you're connected to Six Inches and soil and this whole world? Speaker 1 (8:57) Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Hannah Thurgood. I farm here at the Inkpot in Lincolnshire. And we are also one of many different words farm. So we are organic, agroecological, permaculture demonstration farm. The Six Inches of Soil team came here when they filmed their trailer. So the original trailer had my voice on it and some shots of... of the farm here oh Speaker 3 (9:19) that's really cool and how about joanna and john would you like to introduce yourselves to the listeners hello Speaker 6 (9:25) yes well i'm john and this is joanna we started groundswell here on our farm and so six inches of soil came along and filmed a bit there which is lovely we are we haven't got that many titles to describe our farm from messy and um but beautiful and um Speaker 6 (9:44) We're going organic as we speak. And we've been farming in a regenerative manner for the last 15 odd years. Speaker 5 (9:53) And now we're starting a land school on farm. And that is going to be a learning centre for year round inspiration and help and confidence building and really co-imagining. Because a lot of our projects are very emergent. So we want to deliver them as part of, you know, learning sessions. Speaker 6 (10:12) and having pinched a lot of ideas off Rachel. Speaker 7 (10:15) You're welcome to them. I pinched them from Hannah. Speaker 3 (10:23) And well, John and Joanna, do you want to go first and explain how did you get into this? And particularly from a groundswell angle, there may be some listeners, especially some of our worldwide listeners who may not know what groundswell is. So do you want to explain what it is and particularly the journey you went on that got you interested in this whole space in the first place? Oh, lovely. Speaker 6 (10:44) Yeah, I would love to. Groundswell is, I mean, we claim the name, but it really is a description of a worldwide upswelling of different ways of farming. It's a farmer-led revolution. We're just kind of holding the flag for it. I was so excited by the potential of farming in a better way for our benefit as farmers, but also for the benefit of the consumer and everybody who lives around here and the planet. No one seemed to be promoting it much, so we thought we'd put a show on on our farm here. which we called Groundswell. It's an annual show. We started 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and we had 400 farmers came along and it was just blissful because there were 400 of the most innovative and interesting and introspective farmers you could ever hope to come across. And it was just lovely to gather them all together in one field and they're just... all chatting away and the buzz really was from gathering all these people together and then we had various kind of machines doing demonstrations and talks about different ways of doing things and it went really well so we've done it every year since and now Speaker 5 (11:52) it's got we've got over 10 000 and and it's got lots of tents and lots and lots of talks all happening at the same time but it did grow from this thing of that we were a sort of began as a coalition of the curious and everybody was just finding out what other people did. And I think a lot of the people first heard about it. John, we only marketed it through the then Farmers Forum, which was to do with no tilling. And that's how it began as a no till show. And so I think that it was people who were already trying stuff out on their farms all came to see what everybody else was doing. Plus, we did have newbies, people who were still farming conventionally, because I look at audiences a lot. I'm checking them out all the time. And you can see that they all were wearing slightly red faces and crossed arms and looking kind of perplexed at the beginning. But they are a lot of the people who now come and do talks in our shows now and share their stories. So it kind of worked. That was it. Speaker 3 (12:57) And did that seed start in the US? Am I right in thinking that no till on the plains had something to do with it? Is that right? Speaker 5 (13:05) It started in Kansas. John and I went out to Kansas. John wanted to go and see what they were doing because they're so much ahead of us. And that's where we had the idea when we saw it was a winter conference in a conference center. But there was just buzz and all these people and it was extremely exciting. And then. And we met Gabe Brown and I wangled my way into the green room by saying we were going to do a documentary for the BBC. As you do. They kind of believe. And anyway, the end of the day is we met everybody and we became very and we thought we will make a film. But we'll also do a show because then we went back to our motel and John said, what about if we did it in the summer on farm like they do cereals? And then we've got actual things to look at. And it's not all in the conference centre. And so that's when we decided that we'd start. That's how we had the idea, really. Speaker 6 (14:02) And we did make a film, but it wasn't a patch on six inches of soil. It was called Speaker 5 (14:07) a patch. But it was made for sixpence, and it was just really following John and talking about no-till a lot. Speaker 6 (14:15) Which is obviously jolly interesting. Yeah. Niche. It Speaker 5 (14:21) got people starting. Because in those days, there was literally nothing. So I'd still defend the film for £10,000, which it cost. Speaker 3 (14:30) Yeah. And just say, for me anyway, your audio just briefly cut out, what's the film and how can viewers find listeners? It Speaker 5 (14:37) was called Groundswell. Speaker 3 (14:40) Okay. Speaker 5 (14:41) Nothing to do with the Kiss the Grand Groundswell that's just come out. Although I think they asked me if they could use footage from it. And somebody called Fiona Cunningham-Reed, who's a friend of mine who made films, documentaries, made it because she was really excited about the idea too. I think it was... We were quite evangelical about it. It was in a Speaker 6 (15:01) run-up to the first Groundswell show we made it, because I think the film ends on the day of the first film. Speaker 5 (15:07) It had a lot of the footage from the first show is in the film. Speaker 8 (15:12) I Speaker 5 (15:12) think it spanned the first two, actually. I think it took a while. And basically, Fee Cunningham-Reed took it around. She went to Brazil and talked to people there, doing no-till. She went around with her camera. But it was just... It was just really all about no, it was really talking about no-till because that was what it was called then. I mean, there was organic and there was industrial farming, the normal, what everyone called normal. And then there was this idea that because now we could actually do planting without disturbing the soil and we was all about... the soil and the mycorrhizal and the biology. So that's when that was all happening then. That was 2013, 14, wasn't it? When we went to Kansas. Speaker 3 (15:59) Yeah. Well, Rachel, what's your view on this? Because part of what... Joanna and John shared there was that to begin with, people were curious, but also they had their arms crossed. And gradually over this last 10 years, the body language has changed, which I have definitely felt. I've only been lucky enough to go to groundswell for the last three or four years, maybe. But what's your perspective on this? And especially in the teaching world, how do you welcome people into this space and make use of this change of energy? Speaker 7 (16:31) Yeah, thanks so much. That's a really great question. So, I mean, for us at the Apricot Centre, we have a number of courses that are accredited. So there are accredited courses in regenerative agriculture. And actually, Hannah teaches on some of our courses. And I think that's the key point here is that. We're not academics that are teaching an academic theoretical part of farming. What we're actually doing is teaching new entrance farmers and farmers in transition. We're actually knowledge sharing rather than teaching. So we're sharing the knowledge with industry specialists who have been here before. So people are starting a bit further up the curve and they're able to meet where their feet are in the world of farming and learn something and gain knowledge, peer to peer knowledge, to be able to actually practically put things on their farm. because of industry specialists like Hannah, like Tim Williams, you know, like Claire Hannington-Williams that are coming in and they're teaching from a lived experience of farming communities. So I think for me, the really important thing about the work that we do at the Apricot Centre is not to silo into conventional farming, regenerative farming, regenerative organic farming, organic farming, biodynamic farming. It's all welcome. You need to be where your feet are, as I said, because when we meet... farmers in the field, those practices and those systems changes that we're talking about can be implemented on any different scale at any different point on different types of farms. So you can be a very conventional farm that wants to move to lower inputs, or you could be a conventional farm that just wants to have more trees on your farm. And that is completely welcome. They're still learning within that because people need to move at their own pace. Yes, we're in environmental crisis. Yes, we're in an economic crisis. But you can't rush people through that process. You have to be able to meet them so that they are able to. really engage with that and feel the intuition around of moving into these environmentally friendly nature friendly farming practices but I think the key point for me is is being farmers teaching farmers sharing knowledge with farmers and and being completely welcoming In terms of education and in terms of training is you need to also work with other organisations. So we're working with John and Joanna in able to work in ground school to share it, to share the experience that we have and to hold people through that first process. And Hannah did the same for us. You know, Hannah's been in. She's looked at different ways that we're teaching and she's really influenced a lot of our curriculum and helped us with those elements. So I think it's about this joined up academy. And part of that is Agriculture University still. and making the change there. And part of that is grassroots level education. And then you can go all the way down to sort of school. And once we're kind of working in this joined up, holistic sort of network and net that works of education, then what we're finding is, is that people want to, are curious, that coalition of curiosity that Joanna talked about. It's the same with when we're teaching as well. Speaker 3 (19:16) Yeah. And I'll come on to you, Hannah, in a sec. But just, you said one thing now, which is ground school. I went to Newcastle University. Speaker 3 (19:25) one or two years ago and studied agriculture and basically the course was teaching me that soil is a medium and for you to grow