I watched the Dartmoor pony row unfold the way so many countryside stories do now. A headline lands, people pick a side, and within hours we are no longer talking about land management at all. We are talking about villains and victims.

The version that travelled was simple. Natural England changed the rules. The ponies would be culled. The moor would be “saved” or “destroyed” depending on who you ask, and I fell for it too.

The Times headline that got me was “Dartmoor ponies could be put to death under biodiversity plans”, paired with the kind of figures that make your stomach drop. The reported figures were a 75% reduction in grazing animals, and claims that up to nine in ten ponies could be culled. Those numbers may or may not be where this ends up, but they were enough to set the story running.

That is exactly why I am not writing this to defend Natural England, or to join the pile-on. I am writing because the mechanism matters. When a living landscape gets turned into guidance, quotas, and compliance language, it becomes very easy for everyone involved to dodge responsibility for what happens next. If you care about Dartmoor, you have to care about how decisions get made, how incentives land on real people, and what gets quietly lost when grazing is treated as a problem rather than a tool.

How the story travelled

A big part of the heat came from how the story was framed.

’s Telegraph article’s are a good example of the wider narrative Dartmoor got folded into. In his piece that sits inside the wider anti-quango narrative, with “quangocracy” as the hook, Dartmoor sits alongside jumping spiders near Ebbsfleet, the HS2 bat tunnel, and the Hinkley “fish disco”. The effect is to make every conservation decision feel like either common sense or madness, and to push readers away from the messy middle, which is where most of the truth lives.

, writing on , does something different. She slows it down and asks what has actually changed, what is being counted, and what the downstream effects might be. Her central point is that the viral “pony cull” framing is not the policy. It is the interpretation. The real story is a change in how grazing is counted inside an optional funding scheme, the kind of scheme that looks voluntary on paper but becomes hard to ignore once money and compliance are tied to it. A technical shift like that can end up functioning as a decision once livelihoods and paperwork collide.

Because the question is not only “are the ponies safe”. The question is what happens when counting rules and guidance start doing the work of decision-making, and nobody wants to own the consequences.

Why I am wary of “guidance”

I cannot read the Dartmoor pony row without thinking about my own run-in with Natural England, not because pigs and ponies are the same, but because the pattern is familiar.

Back in 2020, when my partner and I were starting out, we took on a small woodland grazing tenancy on land that was considered part of Odiham Common. The grassland was an SSSI, and the woodland had not been managed for around twenty years. It was overgrown, full of invasive and non-native species, and it needed active management.

We bought twelve Saddleback weaners and did the hard, unglamorous work of making that site workable. We cut back growth to build a training pen. We planned rotational grazing with electric fencing. Access was via a narrow path around a pond and over a wooden bridge, which meant moving pigs in and out was never straightforward.

I still remember the day we eventually left, trying to move our year-old gilts out. One decided she was not crossing the bridge. She dived off the side. I dived after her to stop her getting wedged in a brambly ditch. I ended up in the lake with a pig, while my partner tried to wrangle the rest alone. At the time we were stressed out of our minds. Now we laugh about the day I fell off a bridge trying to save a pig.

The pigs were thriving. The woodland was changing. Regrowth was coming through in areas they had opened up. We pulled out rubbish that had been buried for years and that the pigs had brought to the surface. Even the wetland within the woodland opened up and extended.

Six months in, the landowner received a letter from Natural England. They wanted a site visit after being made aware pigs were grazing in the woodland. We welcomed the representative, showed them what we were doing, and walked them through the changes. In person, it felt positive. We were told we ticked the boxes. Natural England encouraged grazing as a management tool for SSSIs, but normally with sheep, cattle, or ponies.

Then came the letter. The pigs could continue, but with conditions that made the system effectively unworkable. We were told we could not bring in “non-native” bedding like straw, or “non-native” feed, including locally made pig feed. In plain English, that meant we could keep the pigs only if we stopped doing the basic things that make pig keeping viable. We were also told Natural England could help find a “better alternative” grazer than pigs.

We had bigger plans and knew we would outgrow that woodland anyway, so moving on was not the end of the world. What stuck with me was the logic. The outcomes on the ground were praised. The animal doing the work became the problem.

And the irony is that pigs have a long history on Odiham Common. They are not a modern novelty. They are part of the heritage of how these landscapes were used and managed, with pigs on the common mentioned in medieval records, including the Domesday Book.

Years later, I sat in a session at the Oxford Real Farming Conference and saw Natural England promoting pigs as a tool for SSSI management and biodiversity. So yes, I have a bias. It is not that Natural England is always wrong. It is that I have seen how quickly an institution can praise outcomes while still pushing decisions that make the practice impossible, especially when the animal or the method does not fit the default template.

Dartmoor is not just ponies

The Dartmoor story is often told as if it is ponies versus nature, and it is not.

It is ponies, cattle, sheep, people, and a whole set of commoners’ rights and responsibilities that have shaped these landscapes for generations. Dartmoor, Exmoor, the New Forest, and other commons are not museum pieces. They are living systems that have been managed through grazing, and through human communities that know the ground.

That does not mean every grazing level is automatically right, or that change is never needed. I am not arguing for unlimited grazing, and I am not pretending overgrazing is not real. It does mean that a huge reduction in grazing is not a small administrative change. It is a major intervention into heritage, livelihoods, and land management. When that kind of intervention is presented as “just guidance”, or “just counting animals differently”, it becomes very easy for everyone involved to dodge responsibility for what happens next.

Why this matters to farmers

The thing I keep wanting to say, especially to people who only see the ponies, is that this is not a single species story.

If you are a commoner, or you farm alongside common land, you are not just managing animals. You are managing relationships, rights, seasons, welfare, and a landscape that has been shaped by grazing for centuries. The ponies are part of that, but so are the cattle and sheep, and so are the people who have carried the knowledge of how to do it.

So when the public conversation turns into “save the ponies” versus “save nature”, it misses the bigger risk. If the system becomes administratively impossible, or financially unworkable, the outcome is not a neat win for wildlife. The outcome is that farmers and commoners step back, grazing systems shrink, and the practical management that has held these places together starts to fray.

That is why the heritage point matters twice over. It is not only the heritage of semi-wild ponies on the open moor. It is also the heritage of livestock grazing, commoning, and the human communities that have kept Dartmoor, Exmoor, and other commons as living landscapes rather than abandoned ones.

The question I keep coming back to

When we talk about “reducing grazing pressure”, what are we actually proposing.

Are we proposing better grazing, with clearer accountability, better monitoring, and practical support for the people doing the work. Or are we proposing a landscape that is effectively under-managed, because grazing has become politically and administratively too difficult to sustain. Those are not the same thing.

What I want to see, from everyone

If you want the public to trust decisions about commons, you have to show your workings. On Dartmoor terms, that means publishing the stocking assumptions, the welfare plan for any animals removed, and the support for the commoners expected to carry the change. It also means recognising that the countryside is not a spreadsheet, and that guidance built from numbers and desk-based advice can look tidy on paper while landing badly on the ground, especially when it is farmers and commoners who are expected to make it workable.

• Publish the assumptions behind stocking calculations, and how they were reached

• Be clear about what “success” looks like on that specific site, not in theory

• Be honest about who bears the cost of change, and what support exists

• Treat commoners as part of the management system, not a problem to be managed

• Stop hiding political trade-offs inside technical language

And if you are sharing the story online, ask one extra question before you pick a side. What is the mechanism, and who is accountable for the downstream impacts.

Because I have learned, the hard way, that it is possible to tick all the boxes and still be pushed out of the very work that everyone agrees needs doing.

The danger is not only that ponies disappear. The danger is that common land becomes harder and harder to manage at all, until the people who hold the knowledge and do the work step back, and the landscape is left to drift into conflict, scrub, and neglect. A huge reduction in grazing is not a neutral technical tweak. It is a strong intervention, and it should be argued for openly, with the numbers, the welfare plan, and the support on the table.

If this essay helped you see how quickly a living landscape can get flattened into a headline, and how the mechanism matters as much as the emotion, please consider subscribing.

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Free subscribers keep the conversation going, and they help this kind of writing reach people who care about Dartmoor, even if they have never had to manage it. Paid subscribers fund the time it takes to do this properly, to follow the claims back to the counting rules, the incentives, and the real world outcomes, and to keep making the case for a working countryside that does not treat commoners and small farmers as an inconvenience. If you are able to upgrade, thank you. It is one of the most direct ways you can support independent work that is trying to defend rural heritage and practical land management, without pretending a viral story is the same thing as a plan.

Links

Dartmoor ponies could be put to death under biodiversity plans - The Times

Natural England using pony cull to force us off Dartmoor, say farmers - The Telegraph

Culling ponies is the latest sign of Dartmoor’s destruction - The Telegraph

How Natural England paralysed Britain - The Telegraph

Danica Priest

We Need to Save the Ponies but it’s Not What You Think

This week, social media has exploded with fury over reports that 90% of all Dartmoor ponies will be killed to protect nature. News outlets jumped on the story faster than they could check if their lead photos were actually of Dartmoor ponies, and politicians on both sides vowed to ‘save the ponies’. When I first heard there was a potential pony cull, I …

Read more

11 days ago · 10 likes · 5 comments · Danica Priest

If just 5% of my readers tipped £1/$1 this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

The first thing that strikes you about supermarket branding is how confidently it speaks. It does not whisper. It does not hedge. It does not say, this is complicated, or this depends on the season, or this varies by product line, or this is a mix of British and imported because the UK cannot grow everything all year round. It says proudly, boldly, in fonts designed to feel like chalk on a farmyard sign, that you are in the right place, that you are buying the right thing, and that the people behind the business have already done the moral and practical thinking for you.

I want to show you what I mean, because this week a creator I follow on Instagram posted a carousel of images from inside an Aldi store that captures the problem in one glance. I am sharing it here not to pick a fight with one supermarket, but because it is a perfect example of how corporate food sells reassurance first, and leaves the detail to be discovered later, if you have the time and energy to go looking.

That is why the Aldi images land so strongly. They are not a gotcha, and they are not coming from people with endless time and money to shop “perfectly”. They are a simple record of what many shoppers see every day, which is a store wrapped in the language of British farming and British quality, while the shelves beneath that language tell a much more global story. The point is not that imports exist. The point is that the branding is designed to float above the detail, and to make you feel as though the detail does not matter, or has already been taken care of on your behalf.

When you look through the gallery, what you are really seeing is the gap between a mood and a measurable claim. “Championing Great British Quality” is not a label. “Proudly supporting British farmers” is not a breakdown. It is not even a promise you can test, because it is not attached to a product, a percentage, a season, a category, or a price. It is a warm, patriotic atmosphere, and it works because most people are exhausted. Most people are trying to feed their families, keep their budgets under control, and make decent choices in a noisy world, and they do not have the time to interrogate every aisle like an investigator. Corporate food knows this. It sells reassurance first, and it sells detail only when it has to.

The reason I am writing about this now is that I get asked the same question, in different forms, over and over again. People see the flags, the tractors, the announcements about backing British farmers, and they want to believe it, because it would be comforting if it were true. I also think most everyday shoppers are genuinely trying to make better choices within the parameters they have, and the cost of living is high, and not everyone has the luxury of paying for organic, small scale produce from farmers markets every week, even if they want to. That is another story, but it is part of why this branding works. They want to believe that the big supermarkets, with all their power and all their public messaging, are quietly holding up the farming economy behind the scenes, even if individual farmers complain, even if food prices are volatile, even if the news is full of stories about hardship. They want to believe that the slogans mean there is a plan.

The question behind the Union flags 🇬🇧

A reader called left a comment under a post I wrote this week about the speed at which British farming is being hollowed out, and her question was the most ordinary, reasonable thing in the world. She had seen a Morrisons advert in Farmers Weekly and wanted to know whether the big supermarkets help smaller farmers, or whether they are just trying to sell as cheaply as possible. It is also the kind of question supermarkets actively encourage, because their own websites are full of pages about how they are “supporting the people behind the produce”, with photos, farm names, and a tone that suggests the support is built in rather than conditional. That question can sound naive if you have spent years watching how supply chains work, but it is not naive at all. It is the question the whole system depends on you not asking too loudly, because once you ask it, you start noticing how often the answer is hidden in plain sight.

The uncomfortable truth is that supermarkets do sometimes support British farmers, in some categories, in some seasons, for some suppliers, and that is precisely why the marketing is so effective. If the claim were always false, it would be easier to dismiss. Aldi is a good example of how this works, because it will name farms and picture farmers on its website, and it invites you to picture a certain kind of British farming when you see those faces and those place names. The catch is that these are not usually the small scale farms people imagine when they hear the phrase, they are often industrial scale operations that can deliver high yields at a price point the supermarket model demands. The problem is that the support is not automatic, and it is not built into the business model as a first principle. The business model is built on volume, price competition, and the ability to offer shoppers a sense of abundance all year round, and when those priorities come into conflict with British farming, it is British farming that is expected to flex, absorb the risk, and take the hit.

If the support was real, the outcomes would look different

If you want to see why this matters, you do not need to start with animal welfare, or climate, or the most polarising arguments in the food system. You can start with dairy, because dairy is not a lifestyle niche. It is not a trend. It is a staple that relies on daily logistics, processing capacity, and long-term investment, and when it breaks, it breaks in a way that is hard to reverse. Britain has lost 160 dairy producers in just six months. That figure should stop you, not because it is a nice line for social media, but because once farms go, they do not simply reappear when we decide we care about food security again. Skills disappear. Local processing disappears. Herds get sold. Whole communities lose the quiet infrastructure that keeps food moving.

This is where the supermarket slogans start to look less like support and more like a kind of emotional outsourcing. The branding invites you to feel that you are doing your bit simply by shopping where you already shop, and it invites you to treat the survival of British farming as a matter of consumer identity, rather than a matter of power, contracts, risk, and price. It says, you can keep buying exactly as you always have, and still feel like you are backing British farmers, because the store is wrapped in British farming imagery, and because the word “support” is doing a lot of work without ever being pinned down.

When pledges become brand assets

Once you start seeing that, you notice the same pattern in fast food and in corporate welfare pledges, because the underlying incentive is the same. A pledge is a brand asset. It is a story you can tell. It is a way to signal values without changing the economics, and the moment changing the economics becomes unavoidable, the pledge becomes negotiable.

This is also why the Better Chicken Commitment matters as a case study, even if you do not want to spend your life arguing about chicken. It was a commitment made in public, in language designed to reassure consumers and signal higher welfare, but it is also specific enough to test whether a company is willing to change how it buys. It covers stocking density, enrichment, and a move away from the fastest growing breeds, which is the part that really challenges the economics of cheap chicken. When companies sign up, they get to tell a story about values. When they deliver, they have to change purchasing and pay for it. Those are not the same thing, and the pledge only survives for as long as it does not threaten the model.

This is also where it helps to be precise about what “first” means, because corporate storytelling loves a first. Marks and Spencer is widely described as the first UK retailer to sign the Better Chicken Commitment, back in 2018, and it also says that its fresh chicken meets the criteria. Waitrose is described as the first UK retailer to fully meet the Better Chicken Commitment across all own brand chicken categories from September 2025. That distinction matters because it separates a pledge from delivery, and it reminds us that the gap between the two is where the truth lives.

The harder part is what happens when the pledge meets the purchasing department, and when the cost of delivery becomes real. Compassion in World Farming has published a summary of high street food brands that have backtracked on chicken welfare commitments, naming major chains as examples. You do not have to treat that as a morality play to see what it reveals. It reveals that the promise is public, while the retreat is quieter, and that the consumer is left with the impression that the pledge still means something, because the brand has already banked the trust.

If you have ever wondered why people feel so confused and cynical about food, this is part of the answer. It is not that consumers are stupid. It is that the system is designed to make trust feel effortless, while making verification feel like work. It is designed to make you feel that you are supporting British farmers because the store says you are, while the reality of sourcing, pricing, and farm viability sits elsewhere, in contracts you will never see, in margins you cannot measure, and in outcomes you only notice when the damage is already done.

That is why I do not think the right response is to tell people to shop perfectly, or to turn food into a purity test. Most people cannot buy direct for everything. Many people are stretched. Many people are feeding children, managing health issues, juggling work, and doing their best. The point is not to shame shoppers for living in the world we have. The point is to stop letting corporate food companies use British farming as a trust signal while treating British farmers as interchangeable suppliers in a global sourcing machine.

If a supermarket wants to tell you it is supporting British farmers, then it should be able to show you what that means in practice, in ways that go beyond the photogenic parts of the store. It should be able to tell you how much of each category is British, including processed and ready meals, not just the fresh meat and the seasonal produce. It should be able to tell you how farmers are paid, how risk is shared when weather wipes out a crop, and what happens when a supplier speaks up. If a company signs a welfare commitment, it should be able to tell you whether it delivered it, and if not, what changed, because the difference between a pledge and delivery is not a technicality. It is the whole point.

What it looks like to support British farming, for real

So what does actually support British farmers, in the real world, rather than in a slogan. It looks like buying direct when you can, because direct sales are one of the few places where the farmer has a fighting chance of setting a price that reflects costs. It looks like buying local when it is available, and treating seasonality as an honest signal rather than an inconvenience, because a food system that pretends everything is available all the time is a food system that will always lean on imports and cheapness to keep the shelves full. It looks like paying attention to origin labels rather than banners, and noticing when the mood of the store is doing more work than the facts on the packaging.

It also looks like insisting that this is not only a shopping question. It is a policy and power question. If we want British farming to survive, and if we want animal welfare and countryside outcomes that match the values we claim to hold, then we need a food economy that can pay for those things, and we need rules that stop the biggest buyers from shifting all the risk down the chain while borrowing the language of British farming to keep shoppers loyal.

Jillian’s question deserves a better answer than a shrug, because it is the question at the heart of food security, and it is the question that will keep coming back as more farms disappear. Supermarkets and fast food chains are very good at telling stories about who they are. The harder work is asking what those stories cost, who pays the bill, and what happens when the slogans meet the reality on the shelf.

If we do not insist on that distinction, we will keep being sold the story of British farming while the people doing the work are hung out to dry, and we will keep being told that the answer is to shop harder, rather than to demand a system that stops treating trust as a marketing tool and starts treating it as something you have to earn.

If this essay helped you see the gap between the story we are sold and the reality on the shelf a little more clearly, please consider subscribing.

Subscribe now

Free subscribers keep the conversation going, and they help this kind of writing travel beyond the farming bubble, which matters when corporate food branding is shaping what the public thinks is normal. Paid subscribers fund the time it takes to do this properly, to follow the claims back to the sourcing, the incentives, and the outcomes, and to keep making the case for a British food system that does not treat farmers as disposable. If you are able to upgrade, thank you. It is one of the most direct ways you can support independent work that is trying to support British farming, without pretending a Union flag in an aisle is the same thing as a fair deal.

Links and coverage

British quality - Aldi

Supporting the people behind the produce - Morrisons

Britain loses 160 dairy producers in just six months - Farming UK

Better Chicken Commitment UK

High-street food brands backtrack on chicken welfare - Compassion in World Farming

Londoners baffled as giant 'frankenchicken' appears at Pret in central London - Yahoo News

If just 5% of my readers tipped £1/$1 this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

Shane Holland grew up on the clifftops of Cornwall in a food and farming community, then went to London as a student to study medicine. In London, he noticed what he’d lost, the quality and taste of real local food.

Reflecting on the quality and taste of the food he had left behind in Cornwall, compared to what he was eating in London, he decided to abandon medicine and devote his life to improving the way we think of food, to value local, seasonal vegetables, grains, fruits, meat and seafood from local producers. Shane’s wish to connect people with artisan farmers and producers led him to the Slow Food movement which was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986 in the aftermath of a campaign against the opening of a McDonalds near the Spanish Steps in Rome, and it has since spread worldwide. Its message is simple, food should be hugely valued, grown by farmers who are closely connected with their land, soils and animals, and prepared with care and respect for the local food heritage.

He is now the Executive Chairman of and Chairman of Borough Market where many of the stallholders trade under the Slow Food Snail emblem which guarantees ethical, agro-ecological and high animal welfare food produced by small-scale, artisan farmers.

“So often we think of food as being about calories or macronutrients. They’re important, but there’s so much more to be gained from sharing food around the table, sharing food with someone that we love and thinking about where our food comes from. What we really need to do is to get back to actually supporting our farmers, and we do that by eating genuinely local, genuinely seasonal food. If we do that, it’s going to be better for our health, it’s going to be better for the planet.”

On 22 May Slow Food announced that Carlo Petrini had passed away at his home in Bra, Piedmont, Northern Italy, the ancient market town surrounded by small farms, terraces and wooded hillsides where he was born and from where he inspired the Slow Food Movement into a worldwide campaign for locally produced, healthy and traditionally prepared food.

Watch and share the film. Join the Slow Food movement - Seek out local, seasonal food from farm shops, farmers’ markets or online hubs. Choose a connection with your food while keeping money in local communities.

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The UK meat debate keeps trying to force a choice that does not match real life. Either you drop meat entirely, or you carry on as we are. That binary might be emotionally satisfying, but it is not a serious plan for a country that says it wants to be more food secure, more self-sufficient, and more honest about welfare.

I am writing this because I have watched the meat debate get shaped by marketing, not just evidence. Because I am outspoken against factory farming, I naturally get a lot of vegan activism in my feeds. Some of it is thoughtful and some of it is designed to win a moral argument, and the line between the two is not always obvious when you are scrolling. What I keep seeing, again and again, is animal agriculture treated as the villain, when the real project is industrial systems and the way they concentrate animals, manure, and risk. Not all farming systems are equal, and pretending they are is how we end up with heat and no plan.

I do not think there is anything wrong with eating meat. Meat can be a genuinely valuable food, and I am not interested in sneering at people who prioritise it, especially the ones spending real money with a local butcher and keeping British supply chains alive.

But I also do not think we can keep eating meat at the rate we currently do and tell ourselves we are choosing the high welfare option, or the self-sufficient option, or the option that stops us outsourcing welfare and pollution. If we want a UK food system that is more resilient, and more honest about land use, then the conclusion is uncomfortable but simple.

We need better systems and fewer animals going through them.

How the debate gets stuck

A lot of campaigning energy in the UK is currently aimed at one message, that the only ethical endpoint is meat free. Sometimes that message is wrapped in climate language, sometimes in health language, sometimes in animal welfare language, and sometimes in a mix of all three. George Monbiot is one of the most influential voices in this space, and he is often right to challenge complacency and to demand that we stop treating the status quo as inevitable.

Here is what tends to happen next. If the starting point is that meat is always wrong, the conversation stops being about how food is produced and turns into a test of who is a good person. People get pushed to pick a side, and then everything else gets drowned out. That is how you end up with a public debate where the only two options anyone hears are stop eating meat completely, or ignore the problems and carry on.

That false choice suits the people who profit from cheap meat. It makes the middle position sound like weakness, when it is actually the only option that can be built in the real world.

Two different arguments

Most everyday people are not trying to be cruel. They are trying to make decent choices in a noisy world, and they are reacting to real harms. They are reacting to the scale of suffering in intensive systems. They are reacting to pollution, to antibiotic resistance, to the feeling that something is out of balance. They are reacting to the fact that climate and nature targets are being missed, while the food system keeps asking everyone to carry on.

The problem is that the argument often collapses two different claims into one.

Meat is not the same thing as factory farming.

When people say meat is bad, they often mean factory farming is bad. When they say animal agriculture is the villain, they often mean industrial systems are the villain. Those are not the same statements, and treating them as the same is how we keep the worst systems in place. It pushes consumers into guilt or defiance, and it lets the companies who profit from high volume, low margin meat carry on in the background.

If you want a quick test for the next viral post you see, ask three questions. Are they talking about species or system. Are they talking about volume or standards. Are they talking about the UK or global averages. If the answer is species, volume, and global, then you are usually looking at a message designed to win an argument, not a plan designed to change what happens on British land. You can see that ‘I don’t buy it’ framing in real UK campaigning too, including Project Slingshot’s adverts below.

The middle ground

There is nothing wrong with eating meat. Factory farming is wrong, and it should be phased out and banned. High welfare is not a nice extra, it is the minimum standard we should be aiming for. Organic and agroecology matter for nature, biodiversity, and pollution. Food security and self-sufficiency matter for the UK, and we should not rely on imports to square the circle.

If you hold all of those things at once, you run into a constraint that no amount of online certainty can magic away.

The UK cannot supply current levels of meat consumption through high welfare, lower impact systems without either importing more, intensifying more, or eating less.

You can’t have all three

This is the triangle we keep skating around. High welfare. Self-sufficiency. Current volume. You can make progress on two, but you cannot have all three at once without trade offs.

High welfare costs money and labour. Self-sufficiency costs planning and infrastructure. Current volume costs either imports, intensification, or lower welfare. That is not a moral argument. It is a land and infrastructure argument.

This is why this is not just a personal diet choice, it is a national volume question.

The reality of land use

A lot of the loudest arguments about meat talk as if the UK is a blank sheet of paper. It is not.

Defra (Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) estimates the UK had 17.0 million hectares of utilised agricultural area in 2023, around 70% of UK land. Within that, 57% of utilised agricultural area is permanent grassland. The croppable area is just over 6.0 million hectares, around 36% of utilised agricultural area.

Defra also estimates that 85% of utilised agricultural area is used for animal feed or animal production, with assumptions. That is not a slogan. It is a broad indicator, and it is part of why this debate keeps collapsing into extremes. If you want to change what we eat and how we produce it, you have to deal with what our land can actually do, and what it cannot.

Beef and lamb are not the same land use story as pork and chicken. Ruminants can convert grass into food. Pigs and poultry rely far more on feed crops and supply chains. If you want a UK meat debate that is honest, you have to separate systems and scale, and you have to separate high welfare from legal minimum.

What the figures suggest

This is not just philosophical. It shows up in the UK’s own reporting.

Defra’s UK Food Security Report 2024 uses production-to-supply ratios as broad indicators. It puts the UK production-to-supply ratio at 62% for all food in 2023, and 75% for indigenous foods that can be produced here.

Within that, Defra reports the UK pig meat production-to-supply ratio fell from 71% in 2021 to 64% in 2023. For poultry meat, Defra shows the production-to-supply ratio dropped from 93% in 2021 to 82% in 2023.

Defra also cautions that some meat trade is not captured, including meat-based ready meals, and that these ratios are broad indicators rather than a perfect measure. The point is not to treat them as a scoreboard. The point is to stop pretending that the UK can keep eating the same volumes while also claiming we are doing high welfare, high standards, and self-sufficiency.

Where the power sits

This is where the workable middle becomes practical. Welfare is not free. Higher welfare generally means more space, more time, more labour, and more cost. If we mean it, we have to build a food economy that can pay for it, and we have to rebuild the infrastructure that makes it possible.

Defra reports that 21% of smaller abattoirs in England closed between 2018 and 2022. It also notes that four processors account for around 90% of UK poultry production. If you want to raise welfare and reduce pollution, you cannot ignore the reality that standards are shaped by concentrated infrastructure.

Factory farming isn’t the same as meat

This is where I think it is important to be precise. Compassion in World Farming is not the same as George Monbiot, and opposition to factory farming is not the same thing as opposition to meat itself.

I can agree with Compassion in World Farming on the core point that factory farming is a welfare and pollution problem, without pretending that the only ethical endpoint is a meat free country. If you want to reduce harm quickly, you target the systems that concentrate animals, concentrate manure, and concentrate risk. If you want to win a moral argument, you target meat as a category. Those are not the same project, and confusing them is one reason the UK keeps failing to build the workable middle.

You can see how easily that gets blurred in public messaging, including the Animal Justice Project’s London Underground adverts below.

What would actually help

A serious UK approach to meat would start with a clear national aim. We want to be more food secure. We want to be more self-sufficient. We want higher welfare. We want less pollution. We want farming that protects nature and biodiversity.

Then it would act like those aims matter. It would phase out and ban new factory farms. It would reward systems that reduce pollution and improve animal welfare, and it would enforce the rules we already have. It would invest in the boring infrastructure that makes better farming possible, processing, local abattoirs, fair contracts, and planning that does not punish small scale infrastructure.

And it would stop pretending that we can have high welfare, high volume, low price, and high self-sufficiency all at once.

A simple way to choose, without turning it into a purity test

If you are an everyday consumer, you are not going to fix the food system alone. But you can make choices that reward better farming, and you can stop letting the loudest voices push you into a false choice.

If you eat meat, choose better quality and locally sourced where you can. Support the farmers and supply chains that are trying to do it properly. Be honest that higher welfare costs more, and that paying more per kilo is part of the point.

If choosing better meat means you eat less of it, that is not a failure. It is how you make space for a UK food system that is more secure, more self-sufficient, and more aligned with the standards we say we care about.

And if you want this to be easier, not harder, then aim your frustration upwards as well as inwards. Ask where your meat comes from. Ask what standards it was produced to. Ask what happens to the farmer’s margin, and who holds the power in the supply chain. Support policies that keep local abattoirs open, enforce welfare rules, and stop the expansion of factory farming.

So what do I want you to do with this

I am not asking you to feel guilty for eating meat. I am asking you to stop accepting a false choice.

Here is the farmer part that rarely gets said out loud. When the public conversation stays stuck between “meat is murder” and “leave us alone”, the people who get squeezed are not the loudest voices on either side. It is the farmers trying to do it properly. They are the ones carrying higher costs, more paperwork, and more risk, while the market keeps rewarding volume and the supply chain keeps concentrating power. If we want fewer factory farms and higher welfare meat, we have to stop treating that as a lifestyle preference and start treating it as a national choice that needs infrastructure, enforcement, and fair pricing behind it.

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Welcome back to the AgStackers Community Newsletter, a monthly place to spotlight writers sharing thoughtful work about food, farming, and the wider food system.

If you’ve ever tried to find a proper home for farming, gardening, or food system writing on Substack and realised there isn’t really a category for it, you’re in the right place. Whether you write, read, or simply care about how food is grown, you’re invited to join in and help shape what we’re building.

A quick note from me before we get into this month’s links. This newsletter is a little later than usual. I have been in the middle of a fairly intense stretch of life and work, with some big personal loose ends to tie up and a larger project taking up more of my energy than I expected, all while keeping on top of my Farms Not Factories role. The result is that my own Substack rhythm has slipped a bit lately, and I appreciate your patience.

Because of that, I’ve decided to postpone the AgStacker Roundtable until June, so I can get my feet back under me before we dive into the conversation again.

Even when everything else feels slightly chaotic, this community newsletter is one of my favourite posts to write. I love getting to share other people’s work, and I’m grateful to everyone who keeps replying, recommending pieces, and helping make AgStackers feel like a real place.

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Take your time with the work shared here, and if you feel inspired, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.

AgStacker of the Month:

This month’s AgStacker of the Month is , who writes & from Wiltshire. Jackie writes about smallholding and working the land, but what I value most is her clarity. She cuts through the fog when farming conversations get crowded with vague claims, fashionable panic, or easy certainty.

She is practical without being cold about it, and honest without turning that into performance. I found Jackie’s writing when I first joined Substack, and it genuinely shaped how I write and what I pay attention to. She has also been a huge support of AgStacker and of my work, and I do not take that lightly. If you have not read Smallholder Journal yet, this is your nudge.

Here are a few pieces from Jackie and other community voices that resonated with me this month:

Jackie at her absolute best, smallholding detail and dry humour, then the gut punch when “help” arrives in the form of a machine that does not understand what it is driving over. It’s also about what it feels like to spend decades building something careful and living, only to watch it get flattened by someone else’s idea of efficiency.

“At this point, it became apparent that there was a complete lack of understanding, the further up the communication chain you travelled, about our ethos, and the work we have done for the last quarter century. My carefully protected sward has been vandalised. It will be damaged for decades.”

Smallholder Journal

Despair and Dreams

Read more

3 months ago · 13 likes · 7 comments · Jackie Bridgen

And this one does two things we need right now, it names the reality of trying to grow and rear food in weather that feels increasingly unhinged, and it calls out the online hot takes that dismiss self reliance as a “scam” while quietly trying to sell you something. Then she pivots into a deeper point about contentment, and how changing everything can become its own kind of avoidance.

“Self sufficiency is not a scam, it’s not even an illusion. It’s a catch all term used by those of us who espouse it and study its canon, to mean providing as much for oneself as it is possible to do in one’s individual circumstances.”

Smallholder Journal

Self -Sufficiency Is Not A Scam

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a month ago · 9 likes · 3 comments · Jackie Bridgen

From the Community:

A really useful, confidence building guide for anyone who has ever bought seeds on hope alone and then wondered why nothing worked. It is practical without being patronising, and it makes a strong case for reading packets properly, and for valuing locally saved seed that has actually adapted to where you live.

Also, a quick personal note, recently told me they felt overlooked by AgStackers, and I’m genuinely sorry for that. This is meant to be a big, welcoming space, not a club, so if you want your work considered and it slips through, please nudge me. I get a lot of submissions and I would always rather fix that than miss good writing.

“Saved seed—from folks who have been growing and saving seeds in your region; and packaged seed from a company whose seed is grown in a different region—can perform very differently in your garden. Plants, and their seeds, adapt over time to where they are growing and how they are cared for.”

Gardening & Foraging for Life

Seed Packets? Don't Skip the Fine Print!

The information on seed packets can sometimes seem mysterious, especially for new gardeners. If you are planting a garden for the first time, or perhaps you have had certain veggies perform poorly in the past, learning to better understand the info on seed packets can be a huge boon. It can save you time, money, annoyance, and even heartache…

Read more

4 months ago · 29 likes · 10 comments · Gardening & Foraging for Life and Harvest McCampbell

This is a clear eyed look at school dinners and ultra processed foods that does not just wag a finger at parents. ties kids’ health to the boring bits that actually matter, funding, procurement contracts, kitchen skills, and what happens when “cheap” food becomes the default rather than the occasional treat. I also appreciated the practical ending, small acts that are realistic, especially if you are feeding children and trying to keep your head above water.

“Not only is this bad for schools but it’s rubbish for our farmers, especially small-scale producers who cannot possibly compete with Big Food.”

Make The Table Bigger

Kids, School Dinners and Ultra Processed Foods -Why We Should All Care

Headlining our national news earlier this week …not the much longed-for peace agreements in Ukraine and the Middle East that we all ache for (I refuse to bow to Trump’s crass use of the word ’deal’ here) but something no less important for the long term health and wellbeing of our children and teens: that of a n…

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2 months ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Patricia Gray

This one will land hard for anyone who has tried to “do regenerative right” by copying the best looking system on Instagram, then felt quietly crushed when it did not translate to their own land, weather, money, or energy. makes a simple, relieving point, there is no universal recipe, because you are working with a living system and a living life. The best bit is how she reframes frustration, not as failure, but as information, and a prompt to come back into relationship with what is actually in front of you.

“Most land challenges are not technical problems. They are relational. They are shaped by how you observe, how you interpret what you see, and how you make decisions within your unique situation.”

The Messy Middle of Regenerative Agriculture

There is no recipe for stewarding land.

Yep! No recipe here. I recognize this is not what you want to read, especially when you are in the middle of trying to make things work. It would be easier if there were a clear set of steps to follow, something that told you exactly what to do and when to do it so you could get the results you are hoping for…

Read more

2 months ago · 4 likes

This is a clear, slightly gutting read that asks a question most of us dodge because fish are easy to distance ourselves from. walks through the science in plain language, then lands on the bit that matters, if there is a decent chance fish feel pain, our current “out of sight, out of mind” approach is not ethically neutral. The section on slaughter methods is especially worth your time, because it turns a philosophical debate into something concrete that policy and industry could actually change.

“Regardless of species differences, ethically, we should be treating all fish as if they have the potential for pain. But this is rarely reflected in real life.”

Why Welfare Matters

Do fish feel pain?

For centuries, fish have been seen by us as cold, silent, and unfeeling creatures. But is this perception really accurate? Compared to mammals, fish are rarely treated with the same level of compassion or welfare…

Read more

2 months ago · 22 likes · 7 comments · Demi | Why Welfare Matters

This is one of those essays that quietly rearranges your thinking. starts with the way we like farming as a backdrop, then pulls you into what is actually being lost, not just farms, but the everyday knowledge that makes food real. As a dietitian she also refuses the easy binaries, and makes a strong case that health lives in patterns and competence, not perfection or online rules. If you have been feeling that the farming debate is loud but oddly empty, this will explain why.

“Not the performance of it, but the work itself. The long continuity of it. The way knowledge is handed from one generation to the next through repetition and memory.”

Steph on Food

What We Have Forgotten to Eat

Britain likes its farmers best in photographs. We like them half-hidden by mist and rain, standing in gateways with collies at their heels. We like lambs in spring fields and combines throwing dust into idyllic August evenings. Farming survives in the national imagination as something sturdy and reassuring, proof that beneath the warehouses and dual car…

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a month ago · 1 like · Steph Goodson

If you are tired of livestock debates that collapse everything into one number, this is a refreshing read. pulls together a genuinely holistic project that tries to measure sustainability as a whole system, greenhouse gases, nutrition, welfare, and biodiversity, without letting any one metric bully the rest out of the room. The “iceberg indicators” section on welfare is especially interesting, because it shows how you can make something hard to measure more practical on real farms.

“The modelling spans greenhouse gas emissions, nutrition, farm animal welfare and grassland biodiversity — a breadth that reflects the project’s core conviction that sustainability cannot be reduced to any single metric.”

ffinlo's Substack

Data gives us the jigsaw pieces to see the bigger picture

The Pathways project is a five-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research initiative coordinated by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and involving 30 partners across 12 European countries…

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a month ago · ffinlo Costain

This is farm business reality with a lot of heart and a sharp sense of humour. takes you into dairy benchmarking, the unglamorous but genuinely useful practice of putting your numbers on the table and letting your peers pick through them, kindly, but thoroughly. If you like writing that captures both the data side of farming and the very human feelings behind it, this is a great place to start.

“Benchmarking encourages us to lift the hood on our business, wiping away the dust to get a good look at what is working well and what could do with a bit of attention.”

This is a bracing read because it refuses the easy line that prison food should be grim by design. makes the case that decent food is about stability, health, and rehabilitation, and that the costs of doing it badly do not stay behind prison walls. The most interesting idea is the practical one, growing food on site so meals, skills, and dignity are linked, not treated as separate problems.

“Providing decent meals—food that is nutritious, culturally appropriate, and at least somewhat enjoyable—signals that people are still valued as human beings.”

Kate Grows For Chefs

Yes, I Grow in Prisons...

Why Good Food in UK Prisons Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Necessity…

Read more

2 months ago · 1 like · Katie Engler

This is the kind of post I want every new entrant to read before they get pressured into taking a “just be grateful” deal. lays out contract farming in plain English, then gets very specific about what makes an opportunity viable, financially and relationally, without pretending either part is simple. I also love that she ends with nature and place, because those things do matter when you are building a life around a farm, not just a spreadsheet.

“Within the industry there seems to be a rather unfortunate attitude that as new entrants we should be grateful for any chance to farm and take anything offered.”

Anna's Substack

Working It Out

Over the course of the nearly two years we spent looking for a new opportunity eleven farms reached the stage of serious contemplation. Within the industry there seems to be a rather unfortunate attitude that as new entrants we should be grateful for any chance to farm and take anything offered. The result of this is that fairly often really unsuitable …

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2 months ago · 6 likes · Anna Bowen

This is doing what it does best, making the case through pleasure rather than preaching. It’s practical enough to be useful on a busy weeknight, but still manages to feel like a small permission slip to pay attention, to eat with care, and to keep a few standards even when life is full. Also, the kitchen sponge rant is quietly excellent, because it lands the point without turning into a lecture.

“One of the questions we’re often asked is: Slow Food sounds great, but how does it work for busy lives? The truth is that Slow Food can be “fast” food.”

Slow Food in the UK's Substack

There is beauty to eating Slowly

The jewel‑like blood oranges from the slopes of Etna were begging to be bought — and then to be nestling in a bowl on my desk. The bowl, made by hand at Stych Farm Studios in Shropshire, is a blast of colour in these early May days when the month can’t decide whether it’s the high days of June or revisiting March gloom…

Read more

2 months ago · 7 likes · 1 comment · Slow Food in the UK

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An interactive ammonia map has been doing the rounds this month, published by Sustain and Compassion in World Farming.

If you read the headlines, you would think the story is simple. Factory farms are poisoning the air, and the map proves it.

If you read the farming press, you would think the story is also simple, just in the opposite direction. This is another campaign hit, built on shaky data, designed to denigrate sectors that are already heavily regulated.

The truth is that neither of those versions is good enough.

It is a tale as old as time, and it is the same argument I keep coming back to. We keep talking about farming as if it is one system, when it is not. Conventional and regenerative, industrial and small scale, indoor and outdoor, those differences are not branding. They are the difference between how impacts show up, and where.

This information does not appear out of thin air. But it also does not arrive as pure truth. It is collected, modelled, averaged, mapped, and then turned into claims.

So the question I keep coming back to is not who is shouting loudest. It is who is showing their workings.

The language problem

One reason this debate goes nowhere is that we keep using blanket terms, and then acting surprised when people hear something else.

When experts, campaigners, or headlines say animal agriculture is the problem, most people do not hear a technical point about emissions categories. They hear a moral verdict about meat, full stop. That is how you end up with a story where livestock can become the scapegoat for climate and pollution, and the only “solution” on offer is that everyone should eat less meat, without much detail about which systems are driving the harm.

If we want truth rather than tribalism, we have to talk about systems and scale, not just species. That is where the risk profile changes, and that is where the evidence has to be specific. Industrial livestock systems concentrate animals, concentrate waste, and concentrate the impacts in particular places. That is not the same thing as saying all meat is equally damaging, or that all livestock farming is the same.

Cows on permanent pasture, pigs in deep straw yards, broilers in high density sheds, and mixed farms cycling manure back onto land are not the same system, and they do not create the same risks. If you are trying to make sense of the ammonia map, that difference is the whole story.

The question is not just, do I eat meat. It is what kind of system did this come from, and what does it concentrate that I never have to see.

A model, not a measurement

Sustain’s map is not a set of air quality readings taken outside your back door.

It is a modelled estimate of ammonia production and emissions from the largest industrial pig and poultry units, mapped by area.

Sustain is also explicit about what the map does and does not cover. It shows only the largest intensive livestock units, it is based on average ammonia production over a life cycle, and it does not capture emission peaks, for example when sheds are cleaned out. Those limitations do not make it useless. They define what it can and cannot prove.

A tool can be directionally helpful and still be blunt at street level. The national picture and the local picture are not the same thing.

I have not worked inside a factory farm. But I do work with Farms Not Factories, so I have a pretty good idea of what happens inside intensive pig and poultry systems, and what the pressure points tend to be.

And I have my own pig experience, from small scale all the way up to producing around 500 pigs a year. Pigs are actually very clean animals. We bedded their arks with straw and they would not defecate where they slept. Outdoors, they spread manure across a much bigger area, which means it is less concentrated. Indoors, pigs are enclosed in a space that is either bedded with straw or often on a slatted floor, and that changes the whole manure story. Indoor systems require regular mucking out, then storage, then removal and spreading. Outdoor systems still need active management too, because you have to rotate and rest ground so you do not overload it, especially around feeders and water.

Pigs and poultry are often discussed together because their manures tend to be more nitrogen rich than grazing livestock, and a lot of that comes back to diet and digestion. Chickens and pigs are usually fed energy dense, protein rich rations, often grain and soya based. Protein contains nitrogen, so higher protein diets generally mean more nitrogen ends up in the manure. Cattle and sheep are ruminants, built to turn grass and forage into food through a slower microbial fermentation process in the rumen, which changes how nutrients are processed and can mean the waste is less concentrated in raw nitrogen terms.

Poultry is the extreme case because chickens do not urinate separately. They excrete faeces and uric acid together, which makes poultry manure particularly “hot”, meaning it can release nutrients fast and can drive ammonia losses if it is concentrated and poorly managed. Pig manure can also be relatively high in nitrogen compared with cattle manure, and again the housing, storage, and spreading system matters as much as the animal does.

None of this means ammonia is absent from outdoor or regenerative systems. It means the risk profile is different. When manure is dispersed and in contact with soil, you are working with a living system that can absorb and cycle nutrients. When manure is concentrated, trapped in housing, then removed and stored, you create more obvious points where emissions can build up. Scale matters here as well. The bigger the enclosed operation, the more waste you are handling in one place, and the more important it is to be transparent about what is happening, what mitigation is in place, and what the monitoring shows.

As a rough rule of thumb, fresh poultry manure is often cited as around 1.1 to 1.4 percent nitrogen, pig manure around 0.5 to 0.8 percent, and cattle manure around 0.5 to 0.6 percent, but the real world outcome depends on housing, storage, timing, weather, and how and where it is applied.

What the map is, and what it is not

The public claim, repeated across coverage in The Guardian, The Independent, and The Grocer, is that ammonia pollution hotspots cluster where intensive pig and poultry units cluster.

The mechanism is also clear.

Ammonia released from manure can react in the atmosphere to form fine particulate matter, PM2.5. Long term exposure to PM2.5 is linked to serious health outcomes.

Sustain and CIWF also point to wider ecological impacts from excess nitrogen deposition.

Those are not fringe claims. They are consistent with how ammonia is understood in mainstream air pollution science. The question is not whether ammonia can do harm. The question is what this map can prove, and what it cannot.

The pushback from the pig and poultry sectors

Farmers Weekly reports that pig and poultry organisations have rejected the claims and challenged the map. This is where the argument in the middle matters, because the most important line in that coverage is not the insult, it is the clarification. The map is based on estimates of pig and poultry numbers in each area, and even the report itself is clear it is not designed to show ammonia concentrations in the air or deposition rates.

That is a fair point to make. But it is not the same thing as proving the map is wrong. If you want to argue it is misleading, you have to show what the right inputs should be, and what difference that would make to the picture.

Facts versus claims

This is where I think the public conversation keeps going wrong. Both sides are mixing facts and claims, and then accusing the other side of doing propaganda.

A cleaner way to separate them is to ask what is checkable, and what is interpretation. Facts are things you can point to and verify, like a dataset, a method, a permitted stocking number, an emissions factor, a monitoring station reading, or a regulatory threshold. Claims are the conclusions people build on top of those facts, like this map proves your village is being poisoned, or this map is an attack on farmers, or the sector is heavily regulated therefore the sector is not a problem, or the data is insufficient therefore the conclusion is wrong.

Some of those claims might turn out to be closer to the truth than others. But you do not get there by shouting. You get there by showing your workings.

The pushback, and what would actually settle it

This is the part I want to see more of, less outrage, more evidence.

If the NPA and other bodies believe the map is inaccurate in specific places, the strongest response is not a general statement about regulation. It is location based counter evidence that the public can actually interrogate. That means naming which hotspots are wrong, and showing what measured ammonia concentrations or deposition rates look like in those places, with dates and methods, rather than just insisting the map is unfair.

It also means correcting the inputs in a transparent way. If the map used outdated permitted stocking numbers, publish the corrected numbers. If you think the emissions factors are wrong for UK systems, show why, and what factors should replace them. If mitigation measures in permitted units materially reduce emissions in practice, show the monitoring data that demonstrates that reduction, and be clear about where it is working and where it is not.

If you want to challenge a map, you do not get to do it with vibes. You challenge it with better numbers, better methods, or better ground truthing. Otherwise you are not disputing the pollution, you are disputing the discomfort of being associated with it.

This is not a culture war

This is where I think the conventional versus regenerative framing can become a trap, because ammonia is not a branding problem. It is a nitrogen management problem, and it shows up wherever large volumes of manure are produced, stored, and spread.

That can happen in systems that call themselves conventional. It can also happen in systems that call themselves regenerative or organic. The argument we need is not about which label wins. It is about what happens at landscape scale when livestock numbers concentrate, when infrastructure is missing, when enforcement is patchy, and when the public is asked to trust a system they cannot see.

The argument in the middle

Two things can be true at once. The map can be based on real data and a transparent methodology, and still be too blunt to use as a local health verdict. The pig sector can be heavily regulated, and still contribute to ammonia in ways that matter to neighbours, ecosystems, and public health.

If we want to get out of the trench warfare, we need a higher standard from everyone. Campaigners should be clear about what their map does and does not prove. Industry bodies should stop hiding behind the word regulated and start publishing the evidence that regulation is delivering the outcomes they claim. And government should stop pretending this is a culture war, because it is an infrastructure and enforcement question, and it is also a food system question.

If we keep building systems that concentrate animals, concentrate waste, and then concentrate the risk in a handful of rural places, we should not be surprised when the public starts asking what they are breathing.

If this helped you make sense of the ammonia map debate, please subscribe. Free subscribers keep the conversation going, and paid subscribers fund the time it takes to do this properly. And if you know someone who is stuck in the slogans on either side, please share this with them.

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Sources

New map exposes ammonia pollution hotspots from factory farms - Sustain

Mapped: Ammonia production from industrial livestock - Sustain

Ammonia air pollution hot spots found in parts of UK with most factory farms - The Independent

Pig and poultry sectors reject new claims about ammonia levels - Farmers Weekly

'Serious Concerns" raised about factory farming as ammonia hotspots revealed - The Grocer

Ammonia pollution hotspots found in areas of UK with most pig and poultry factory farms - The Guardian

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, to go live before Easter, but I got sick and it sat in my drafts. The headlines I am pointing to are slightly older now, but the pattern has not changed. If anything, it has become harder to ignore. The warning is still clear, and the response is still missing.

Last week I wrote that The Warning is Clear. The Response is Missing. Farmers are already building resilience, but policy and markets still reward short term thinking.

One story landed this week that says a lot about what the system rewards, vegetables being sold for 4p ahead of Easter. It is not happening in isolation. Two other very recent pieces, on input shocks and on ignored warnings inside government, help show what sits behind it.

The other two pieces are about war and shipping routes, and about a government report that seems to have vanished into a drawer. Put alongside the 4p headline, they start to look less like separate stories and more like a system that keeps rewarding short term thinking.

When Costs Jump, Everything Jumps

The Conversation reported that the conflict in Iran and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz is already feeding through into UK farm costs. Red diesel, the rebated fuel widely used in agriculture, has risen by around 60%. Fertiliser markets are moving too. The UK imports around 60% of its nitrogen fertiliser, and around one third of global fertiliser trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which makes prices highly sensitive to disruption.

This is the part that is easy to miss if you do not work in farming. Synthetic nitrogen is not just a line on a farm budget. It is one of the foundations of modern yields, and it is fossil fuel linked. When energy markets or trade routes wobble, the cost of growing food wobbles with them.

That does not mean farmers are helpless. Many are already reducing dependency where they can. They are building fertility through rotations, legumes, composts, manures, grazing, and better soil management. But those changes take time, knowledge, and often a period of lower output while the system rebalances.

If the wider food economy is set up to punish any dip in yield, or any increase in cost, then we are asking farmers to do a transition with one hand tied behind their back.

A Report that Should Have Changed Everything

The Times reported on a DEFRA commissioned assessment completed in 2024 which warned that Britain’s food supply, water supply, and natural ecosystems were on a decline and collapse trajectory , with a realistic possibility that by 2030 they could be at strategic risk of catastrophic failure .

That is an extraordinary thing to write down in a government report. The most unsettling part is not the wording. It is what happened next. The report did not sit at the centre of public debate. It surfaced as a scoop, then drifted away again. The DEFRA Futures team was disbanded the following spring, and when the report was requested under Freedom of Information the government claimed to have no record of it.

Slow moving risks that decide whether we can keep producing food in a volatile climate get filed under worthy, then forgotten, until they show up as a price spike, a supply shock, or a political crisis. Then we act surprised, and we reach for emergency measures, and we call it resilience.

Resilience is not an emergency response. It is a design choice.

Cheap Veg is Not the Same as Affordable Food

And then there is the story that looks small, but tells you a lot about what the system rewards.

Farmers Guardian reported that Aldi, Lidl and Morrisons have cut the price of seasonal vegetables to 4p ahead of Easter, with Tesco and Sainsbury’s at 15p per item, and Asda was offering five for £1, which is 20p per item. The British Growers Association chief executive Jack Ward said “growers have seen this pattern for years”, and asked the obvious question. Retailers are prepared to invest in drastically reducing prices, but are they prepared to invest in farming and make sure growers are properly rewarded for the increased costs.

Veg at 4p might look like a bargain, but it sends a dangerous message that food has no value. Nobody blames shoppers for taking a deal when times are tight. But when produce is sold for pennies, the real cost does not disappear. It always lands somewhere else in the system.

Sometimes it lands on growers through contract pressure and risk shifting. Sometimes it lands on farm shops, veg box schemes, and local greengrocers who simply cannot compete with a loss leader. Sometimes it lands on the long term health of local supply, because if the public is trained to expect vegetables for pennies, then the businesses trying to grow and sell them have to fight uphill for every pound.

Farmers Guardian also noted that growers raised concerns at Christmas when festive staples such as Brussels sprouts dropped to below 8p per kg. Now it is 4p at Easter. That is not a one off, that is a direction of travel.

Fresh vegetables are often used as a loss leader , meaning they are sold extremely cheaply to get people through the doors, in the hope they will spend on higher margin items. Supermarkets say farmers are paid as per contract and are not financially impacted by the low retail price.

A loss leader is not a mystery. It is a deliberate choice to sell something essential for next to nothing because it gets people through the doors, and because the supermarket can make the money back elsewhere. It works because vegetables feel like a moral good. A bag of carrots at 4p looks like kindness in a cost of living squeeze, and it gives the retailer a glow of generosity while the real margins sit in the rest of the trolley.

The defence you will hear is that farmers are paid as per contract, so the grower is not affected by the sticker price. Sometimes that is true in the narrowest sense. But the sticker price still does work. It tells shoppers what food is supposed to cost. It tells every other seller in the chain what they are competing with. It tells growers what kind of retail culture they are trying to survive inside.

This is What No Response Looks Like

When I was farming pigs, I learned quickly that the numbers do not care about your intentions. If you are being squeezed on price, you do not just lose profit. You lose room to breathe. You delay repairs. You stretch feed. You put off investments that would make your system sturdier next year. You take on more risk because you have to keep cash moving. That is how a business becomes brittle.

So when vegetables are priced like a joke, it is not only an insult. It is a signal that the system is still designed to treat food as a marketing prop, not as essential infrastructure. And that is exactly the mindset we cannot afford if we are serious about resilience.

We cannot build food security on a foundation of volatile inputs, ignored risk assessments, and a retail culture that treats vegetables as disposable.

My Small Ask

If you are reading this as a shopper, a cook, a parent, or someone trying to keep the food bill under control, please do not hear this as a lecture.

If you can, make one purchase this week that backs a grower or a local supply chain that cannot compete with loss leader pricing. That might be veg from a market stall, a veg box, a farm shop, flour from a regional mill, or meat and dairy from a genuinely pasture based system.

And if you do buy veg from a supermarket this weekend, ask one simple question. Where is this grown, and what is the farm doing to protect soil and water. You are signalling demand for resilience, not just price.

If you missed my paid post on the Soil Association’s No Drought About It report, that is where I set out the practical, farm level side of this story, what resilience looks like when it is built deliberately rather than improvised in crisis.

If this work is useful to you, the simplest way to support it is to become a paid subscriber. It funds the time it takes to keep researching, writing, and publishing independently.

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Sources

No drought about it: Farming agroecologically for climate resilience - Soil Association

How the war in Iran is already affecting UK farmers and food production - The Conversation

Britain’s food supply ‘at risk of catastrophic failure by 2030’ - The Times

Major UK supermarkets criticised after reducing price of veg to 4p over Easter - Farmers Guardian

If just 5% of my readers tipped £1 or $1, this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

Three months ago there were three of us on the call. This time there were six, from different places and with different stakes in the work, and it made for a really good, practical conversation. It also meant we could talk about local food without pretending one model fits everywhere.

Huge thanks to , from Son of the Soil, , , and for bringing so much clarity and lived experience into the room.

We kept circling one question. How do you make real food easier to access, without quietly relying on farmers to carry the whole system on their backs.

Because most people do want real food. They also need it to be accessible, and accessible is not just price. It is time and transport, routine, and the friction of getting food into a normal week when you are working, parenting, caring, commuting, and trying to keep your head above water.

Adam named one of the core tensions early on, and it stayed with me because it is both true and easy to miss when you are looking for a single solution.

Markets matter. They are where trust is built, where farmers are seen, and where you can have the kind of customer relationship you do not get through a supermarket shelf. But we also talked honestly about how markets can drift, how reselling muddies the waters, and how easy it is for “farmers market” to become a label rather than a guarantee.

Cheryl brought us back to what is at stake when we get this right, and when we get it wrong.

We also talked about the practical strain on producers. The reality that you can work all week producing food, then spend your weekend hauling it, setting up, selling for hours, packing down, and doing it again, because consistency is what keeps customers coming back. That is not a complaint, it is just physics. It is one reason why the conversation kept moving toward the missing middle, the infrastructure that makes local food possible at scale without burning people out.

Adam made the case for food hubs that aggregate produce from multiple farms, use an online ordering window, and then run a single weekly pickup. Not to replace markets, but to remove friction for customers and remove some of the endless extra labour for farmers.

Sam grounded it in the reality of logistics and regulation, especially around processing. Even when there is demand, the bottlenecks are real, and they shape what can be sold and how.

Tim brought us back to resilience as a principle. If one choke point can topple the whole house of cards, then we do not have resilience. We have a system optimised for convenience and cost, and it is starting to show its fractures.

If there was one shared thread running through it all, it was this. We cannot rebuild food resilience by telling people to try harder.

We rebuild it by making real food easier to access, and by building the local infrastructure that takes some of the load off farmers so they can keep farming.

That might look like better markets. It might look like food hubs. It might look like school gardens and food education. It might look like community processing facilities, or simply more honest conversations about what food actually costs.

Probably it looks like different combinations of all of those things, depending on where you live.

• If you are new here, start with the AgStackers Directory. Liz Reitzig has built something genuinely useful, organised by location and subcategory so you can find the voices that match your patch of land and your questions.

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• The community newsletter goes out on 16th May. If you want your work included, send me links to your recent posts you want the community to read, plus a single line on why it matters right now.
  

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Welcome back to the AgStackers Community Newsletter, a monthly place to spotlight writers sharing thoughtful work about food, farming, and the wider food system.

If you’ve ever tried to find a proper home for farming, gardening, or food system writing on Substack and realised there isn’t really a category for it, you’re in the right place. Whether you write, read, or simply care about how food is grown, you’re invited to join in and help shape what we’re building.

I’m also really excited to say the AgStacker Roundtable is tomorrow. I could not be more excited, because building community always feels like a leap of faith at the start. Thank you to everyone who joined last month, and to everyone who has been replying and showing interest since.

We’ll be running this month’s Roundtable on Zoom again, so we can all talk together properly and it can feel like a real discussion.

When: Sunday 12th April at 2pm (UK time). That’s 10am Eastern, 9am Central, 8am Mountain, and 7am Pacific.

I’ll also post a recording and recap on Substack next week, so if you can’t make it live, you won’t miss out.

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Take your time with the work shared here, and if you feel inspired, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.

AgStacker of the Month:

This month’s AgStacker of the Month is Tim Connolly, a US based food security supporter and a steady presence in this community. He does not work in food or farming, but he shows up with real care and curiosity, and he is brilliant at spotting the writing that deserves a wider audience.

Tim publishes and runs , where he shares and boosts other voices across the food and farming world. One of my favourite Tim lines is that growing your own food or buying locally produced food is a quiet act of rebellion, and that spirit runs through everything he does.

Here are a few pieces from Tim and other community voices that resonated with me this month:

There is something both funny and infuriating about watching no till and soil health get treated like a fresh scientific revelation, when plenty of people have been proving it with their own fields and their own finances for years. If you want a quick reminder that the old knowledge still matters, and that the “new” solutions are often just the ones we stopped valuing, start here.

“Big Sigh from me - Folks who farm and grow their own food using regenerative practices that have been around for a long time have to wait for Science stamp their approval of what we already know.”

Mile Wide and Inch Deep

Science Reveals What Regenerative Farmers Already Know

I am republishing this article I found in Grist that is encouraging… in a way. Harper Adam University in the UK has documented the impact of Till vs No Till using some sophisticated fiber optic technology…

Read more

3 months ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Tim Connolly

This is a proper love letter to what you are building with the Roundtable, and it also shows why Tim matters in this space. He is not just recapping, he is translating the feeling of it, the mix of hope, frustration, and determination, and he is doing what community builders do best, connecting people, naming what is at stake, and inviting more people to step in. I also love how he lands on the practical theme that kept coming up, local food and home growing as a quiet rebellion, and then pushes it one step further by asking the harder question, rebellion against what, and what do we actually stand for.

“Growing your own food as a quiet act of rebellion was a theme that seemed to resonate in our discussion. Perhaps that is where our strength lies.”

Grange Hall

AgStacker Roundtable Premiere

It was exciting. I was invited to spend sometime yesterday morning with Helen Freeman Helen Freeman and Kody Karr Lessons from the Land talking about ourselves and what we do here on Substack and on the farm, at the first Roundtable discussion organized by Helen. Helen is in the UK raising pigs and publishes a monthly Ag Stacker Community Newsletter that I cross post here on Grange Hall…

Read more

4 months ago · 10 likes · 7 comments · Tim Connolly

This is basically the AgStackers origin story in post form, the frustration of being scattered across vague tabs, the sense that agriculture writing is everywhere on Substack but weirdly hard to find, and the refusal to stay invisible while crypto and comics get neat little signposts. Tim is doing two things at once here, pushing Substack to take food and farming seriously as a category, and building a practical workaround in the meantime with Grange Hall as a free, open noticeboard for writers who want allies and readers who want to find them.

“What about all things Agriculture? There are a bunch of us. A big bunch who write across the spectrum of all things growing and planting and harvesting and raising our food.”

Grange Hall

Petition To Add An Agriculture Tab on Substack

Thanks to the hard work of Trave Lindley, we have a petition circulating around Substack to add an Agriculture Tab on this platform. Many of us have groused long and loud about the difficulty finding and saving content on here, The tabs, Substack Team…

Read more

a year ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Tim Connolly

From the Community:

This post from is one of the clearest explanations I have seen of how small farms survive, not through vibes or virtue, but through ordinary people showing up week after week with cash and appetite. The “Grey” character is the perfect example of a customer who does more than buy, he stabilises the whole system by taking the risk out of harvest day, and turning leftovers into plans instead of losses. It is also a reminder that when you buy direct you are not just shopping, you are helping keep a whole alternative food network alive.

“Customers don’t just take part in CSAs, farmers markets and online small farm sales. Customers create these fresh food networks.”

About the Farm

About the Farm: Creating Small Farms

If you’ve just arrived, please start at the beginning of the story. It will be more fun that way. Chapter One…

Read more

7 months ago · 21 likes · 10 comments · Eli

This is lambing season as it actually happens, the day you thought you had off, the dash through snow in whatever you are wearing, the relief of a healthy wobbling lamb and the gut punch of the one you cannot save. is honest about the emotional arithmetic of a small flock, where losing one is both normal and still a real loss, and she captures that strange mix of exhaustion and purpose that keeps you checking cameras at 2am anyway.

“Sure, there is exhaustion in this life, and worry—the particular kind that has you checking cameras for new lambs at 2am...

But there is also joy, and beauty, and a connection to nature that I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

Maine Homestead Life

Sammy Had a Little Lamb

It was meant to be my day off. The lambs weren’t due for another week. And yet—there I was, pajama pants tucked into my muck-boots, hurrying through the snow with towels and iodine and Nutri-Drench in my arms, because Helen had other plans.🐑…

Read more

3 months ago · 31 likes · 6 comments

This is a thoughtful piece about natural capital that does not fall into either easy camp. can see why investment models are tempting, because restoration needs money and scale, but she keeps returning to the uncomfortable bit, land is not just an asset class. When carbon and biodiversity credits start outcompeting crops and grazing, the question stops being whether nature can be priced and becomes who gets to decide what land is for, and who is left living with the consequences.

“Land produces food, carries heritage and sustains communities. Land holds cultural identity and intergenerational knowledge. Land connects soil health, human health, and local economies in ways that are not easily captured in financial models.”

This is a light, warm little provocation that still lands a real point. nudges us away from the lazy hierarchy where humans are “obviously” the smartest, and instead pays attention to the kinds of intelligence we tend to ignore, body language, collective problem solving, and the quiet competence of animals who do not need a manual to be themselves. The ant section is especially fun, because it reminds you just how much of what we call civilisation is not uniquely ours.

“According to current scientific records, humans began farming about 12,000 years ago. It’s believed that ants began farming around 66 million years ago, so needless to say we were a little late to the party.”

This is gardening as a messy, funny, slightly feral ecosystem, not a tidy checklist of tasks. Ruben’s big point is simple and true, if you want crops you need allies, lizards, sparrows, bees, whatever can help you keep the balance when the pests and weather turn up. It is also a great reminder that “failure” seasons are often the ones where you finally see how the whole system actually works.

“Gardening isn’t about pruning, deworming and fertilizing per se, it’s more about managing an ecosystem.”

Industrial Gardening

Companion Fauna

Greeted with a sudden scurrying commotion under my feet one morning, I realized two things: that winter was over and I was late to the planting season. The lizards were back and took residence under a rather small and shabby platform I deck-screwed together out of 2x4’s late last year. But what do lizards have to do with it? Well, if there’s one thing I…

Read more

4 months ago · Ruben Amiragov

This is comfort food writing with real grit underneath it. Emily starts in the dark of a migraine week, where even cooking feels like too much, and somehow turns eggs and a gently poached chicken into a kind of care you can actually manage. Then she goes deeper, into the joy and responsibility of keeping “The Ladies”, the way chickens give you rhythm, patience, and ridiculous laughter, and also the blunt lessons of loss when you get one small thing wrong.

“Rhythm- The daily rhythm they bring to your life is like a metronome beating out routine anchoring you to the here and now. I am grateful to them for this constant they bought into our lives.”

Moments through food

All Things Chickens and Eggs

Hello, Welcome to Moments through food. Here I write to you weekly from my steading in the Scottish borders, telling stories about food and ingredients alongside my slightly obsessive recipe development. I am here to give you the tools to understand how or why things work in recipes. This helps you to build confidence in the kitchen as well as being abl…

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3 months ago · 25 likes · 13 comments · Emily Cuddeford

This is the kind of piece that makes you sit up because it is not sci fi, it is a very practical warning about trust. Kristin argues that the food system is uniquely vulnerable to deepfakes because video already carries so much weight in agriculture, and because disgust and outrage travel faster than corrections ever will. The most useful part is that she does not just panic, she gives a clear, doable defence that is basically old school, document your real operation, know your “tells”, and have the relationships in place so third parties can vouch for what is true.

“Deepfakes don’t need to compromise a SCADA system or get anywhere near an Industrial System to cause real damage. They go after what I’d call the perception layer, the part of any system that decides what is true, what happened, and what should happen next.”

Kristin M King

When the Feed Is Fake: AI-Generated Video and the Food System We Trust

I spent last year writing a book about cybersecurity in food and agriculture. Ransomware hitting meat processors, IIoT concerns in fisheries, phishing attacks on co-ops, GPS spoofing on precision ag equipment, OT vulnerabilities in food factories. A f’ton to cover, and I’m proud of it! What didn’t make it into those pages is what I want to talk about he…

Read more

3 months ago · 8 likes · 7 comments · Kristin Marie King

writes from the inside of a shift a lot of people are quietly making, from trying to opt out of harm, to trying to take responsibility for it. I like how she does not sneer at her younger self, she explains the pull of diet culture, the confusion, the moral discomfort, and then lands on a steadier argument, you cannot eat without impact, so the question becomes which systems you fund. It is a humane case for informed demand, and for supporting the farmers who are actually doing the hard work of raising animals well.

“Just because it’s sad, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. This truth calmed my inner struggle, finally untangling the mental and emotional push-and-pull I had been experiencing.”

Radical Farm: Animals, Food and Our Future

Fixing Our Food System: The Importance of Informed Consumer Demand

This article first appeared in the December 2025 issue of Revive the Table. Subscribe here…

Read more

5 months ago · 4 likes · Abey Rae Scaglione

AgStackers is a community effort, and your voice is what will shape it.

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Reply to this post with your links, ideas, and anything you want me to see for next month’s AgStacker. If you’ve published something you’re proud of, or you’ve read a piece you think the community would love, drop it in the comments and I’ll pull from there when I’m curating the next newsletter.

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If you find value in this community and want to help it grow, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support keeps AgStackers thriving and independent, and it also gives you access to the monthly AgStacker Roundtable if you’d like a more connected space to talk, swap ideas, and help shape what we build next.

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Thanks for being part of the community. Let’s see where we can take this together.

Until next month,

H x

If just 5% of my readers tipped £1/$1 this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

No Drought About It was easy to miss. That is the problem.

A report lands that should be headline news for anyone who eats in the UK. It is clear, practical, and rooted in what farmers are already living through, yet it does not get treated like the moment it is.

It is not a secret plot. It is mostly the attention economy. We are drowning in crisis, and the loudest story wins the day. Meanwhile the slow moving risks that decide whether we can keep producing food in a volatile climate get filed under worthy, then forgotten.

The Soil Association report No Drought About It, Farming Agroecologically for Climate Resilience by Dr Hannah Blitzer and Maddy Potter Wood, makes the case that climate change is already undermining UK farming resilience. Food security is now tied to whether we build whole farm capacity to cope with heat, drought, and flooding, and whether we stop rewarding short term thinking that looks productive on paper while weakening the systems that help farms absorb shocks.

It is worth saying up front that this report has not been completely invisible. We shared it in the March Farms Not Factories newsletter with a simple line that still holds up.

“It is straightforward guidance on producing healthy food from resilient soils through mixed farming and diverse crops, while stepping back from chemical inputs and intensively reared livestock.”

Whatever your politics, you can see volatility in the fields. If you have been watching land sit under water all winter, then bake hard in summer, you do not need persuading that something has changed. What is harder is getting the rest of the food system to treat resilience as essential infrastructure rather than a nice to have.

Some people will call this climate change. Some will call it volatility. Some will call it a run of bad luck that keeps repeating. The practical question is the same.

How do we keep producing food when the seasons stop behaving.

What The Report Says

Soil is Not Just Dirt

Soils acts as water storage, flood protection, drought insurance, and a carbon bank. Healthy soils infiltrate and hold water. Degraded soils shed it. When soils fail, water takes the fastest path downhill, carrying nutrients and sediment with it. That is how you get flooded fields, stressed crops, polluted rivers, and a farming business that is always one extreme season away from the edge.

Livestock is Not a Simple Villain or Hero

The question is what system the animals are in. Industrial livestock production is framed as brittle and risk heavy because it concentrates animals, depends on imported feed, and locks farms into high input supply chains. By contrast, extensive and mixed systems can support resilience when they are aligned with rotations, forage, and nutrient circularity.

Trees Belong in the Working Landscape

Agroforestry is described as a climate solution that can cool microclimates, reduce flood peaks, protect soils, and support animal welfare through shade and shelter. It can also diversify income, but it needs long term support because trees do not pay back on the same timeline as annual crops.

Chemical Dependency is a Resilience Problem

This is not only an environmental argument. Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and many pesticides are fossil fuel derived. Their prices and availability are vulnerable to global shocks. Their overuse can undermine soil biology and biodiversity, which then increases the need for more inputs.

That is a dependency loop, and it is not a stable foundation for food security.

Why This Keeps Getting Missed

That last point is where Maddy Potter Wood has been pushing the conversation, and I think she is right to do it. She argues that warnings like this can feel buried even when they are clear, practical, and urgent, and she uses current geopolitical tension as a news peg to underline a basic vulnerability.

We are already seeing how quickly that exposure can show up in farm costs, with the war in Iran and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz feeding through into fuel and fertiliser markets.

If your food system relies on fossil fuel based nitrogen, you are exposed to energy markets, trade disruption, and conflict far beyond your farm gate.

This week, The Times reported on a Defra commissioned assessment completed in 2024 which warned the UK could be at strategic risk of catastrophic failure in food, water, and natural ecosystems by 2030. The details are different, but the pattern is familiar.

The risk is not abstract. The risk is that we keep treating resilience as a side issue until it shows up as a price spike, a supply shock, or a political crisis.

The Ten Point Plan

The report is not vague. It sets out a Ten Point Plan for building climate resilience:

1. Develop a national resilience plan for farming - Work with the Climate Change Committee on an integrated plan that prioritises adaptation and mitigation. Include both green infrastructure, like nature based solutions, and grey infrastructure, like water reservoirs, for drought, heatwaves, and flooding. Break down silos across the UK and align policy, including whole farm planning and the goal of 10% organic farmland.

2. Strengthen soil protections - Develop Soil Health Action Plans with binding soil recovery targets so all soils are under sustainable management by 2035. Make farm payments conditional on basic good soil practice, and fund practices above that baseline. Tighten rules on high risk practices, like planting maize on floodplains and cultivating steep slopes.

3. Scale up climate friendly foods - Reduce reliance on fruit and veg imports from climate vulnerable countries by doubling land for horticulture and expanding support for agroecological, organic, and small scale growers. Increase demand for British whole and minimally processed foods by investing in beans, legumes, and other alternative proteins, and by scaling local and sustainable sourcing through public procurement.

   

4. Reduce industrial livestock pollution - Incentivise mixed and extensive pasture based systems, and pair that with firm, fair regulation of industrial livestock. Use permitting thresholds and planning controls in nutrient overloaded catchments, and curb hidden support that masks the true costs of industrial models.

5. Reduce reliance on synthetic inputs - Promote organic and low input practices, including integrated pest management and extensive livestock, and improve nutrient cycling at catchment level. Cutting synthetic inputs reduces pollution, supports public health, and limits exposure to price shocks.

6. Scale up agroforestry - Expand agroforestry to 5% of agricultural land by 2030 and 10% by 2040, with half of all farms implementing it by 2050. Support whole farm, multifunctional systems such as silvoarable and silvopastoral, and provide long term funding. Remove barriers for all farmers, including tenants, and support new markets for UK grown woody products and nuts.

7. Improve monitoring and baselining, and use it in Whole Farm Plans - Invest in farmer led monitoring, verification, and reporting with robust indicators. Expand training, and consider making payments conditional on adopting monitoring. Integrate the data into whole farm planning so farmers can build resilience to economic and climate shocks while delivering public goods.

8. Make supply chains fairer for British producers - Ensure trade and tariff agreements uphold domestic standards and do not displace harms to climate vulnerable regions. Invest in regional food infrastructure, including local hubs, abattoirs, processing, and distribution, to diversify markets, support on farm value addition, and improve resilience.

9. Make private markets work for climate resilience - Strengthen governance of voluntary carbon and natural capital markets to reduce risk and enable credible blended public private finance. Markets can support land management change, but governance is needed to avoid unintended harms, including poorly designed offset schemes.

10. Invest in the right technology, infrastructure, and renewables for resilience - Fund research and innovation for on farm water storage, local renewable energy, and technology that aligns with agroecological principles. Avoid over reliance on unproven silver bullet solutions that deliver few multifunctional benefits.

You do not have to agree with every line to see the through line.

Resilience is not only about water availability and flood defences. It is about whole farm planning, advice, knowledge exchange, and fair markets that make it possible to adopt practices that keep soils functioning. It is about reducing exposure to input shocks, whether that is fertiliser prices, pesticide resistance, or imported feed risk.

It is about building systems that can take a hit and keep going.

If you do not work in farming, here is one concrete way to picture whole farm planning. It is the difference between reacting to each extreme weather event as a one off, and redesigning the farm so water has somewhere to go, soils can hold more of it, crops are less exposed, and the business is not forced into the most input heavy choices just to survive the season.

So Here Is My Ask

If you are reading this as a shopper, a cook, a parent, or someone trying to keep the food bill under control, please do not file this under interesting but not for me. Climate resilience is not a niche farming issue. It is one of the things that decides whether food stays available and affordable.

If you can, make one purchase this week that backs a farm or business building soil and diversity. That might be veg from a local grower, pulses, flour from a regional mill, or meat and dairy from a genuinely pasture based system. You are rewarding the direction of travel.

And if you buy from a veg box, farm shop, butcher, market stall, or even a supermarket, ask one simple question. Where is this grown, and what is the farm doing to protect soil and water. You are signalling demand for resilience, not just price.

Do not let this disappear under the next crisis.

And if you have seen organisations respond already, please add links. I would genuinely like to build a public trail of who is amplifying this and what they are saying, because that is how we turn a report into pressure, and pressure into policy.

Read more

Open, practical, and generous, with people sharing what they are building and what they are up against, without forcing everyone into the same box. Huge thanks to , , and for bringing so much clarity, warmth and wisdom to the conversation, from policy and advocacy to the lived reality of producing food and trying to make it add up.

We talked about food security and food sovereignty, and the language that helps consumers find good food without flattening the complexity of how it is produced. We also kept coming back to resilience, and to the idea that small acts, done locally and repeated, can be a form of defiance and a way of rebuilding something more durable. Right near the end Tim found himself glad that AgStackers never landed on a single big category. What we have now is richer and still a little undefined, and I think that is part of why it can hold so many perspectives without turning into factions.

• If you are new here, start with the AgStackers Directory. has built something genuinely useful, and it now includes 56 writers, organised by location and subcategory so you can find the voices that match your patch of land and your questions.

  AgStackers Directory

• The Directory now also has a bulletin board. If you have something to share, an event, a callout, a resource, a question you want eyes on, or a post you are proud of, add it there so the right people can find it.
  

  Bulletin Board

• The community newsletter goes out on 11th April. If you want your work included, send me links to your recent posts you want the community to read, plus a single line on why it matters right now.
  

• If you want to join the next AgStackers Roundtable on 12th April, that is for paid subscribers. If you have been reading along quietly and thinking, these are my people, this is the simplest way to step into the room and help keep it going.
  

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Organic is having a moment again.

Not in the nostalgic back to the land way. More in the practical way. People want to trust what they are feeding their families.

The Soil Association now puts the UK organic market at £3.9bn, after more than a decade of consecutive growth. Organic chicken sales are up year on year even though it is still about three times the price. Yeo Valley is reporting turnover of £230m. Demand for natural and Greek yoghurt is up sharply. If you read the coverage, the story is simple. People are worried about ultra processed foods and they are moving towards products that feel cleaner, safer, and more trustworthy.

Since I published my last piece, the Soil Association has released its Organic Market Report 2026. It puts the boom story in crisp numbers, and it also lands the uncomfortable reminder. Organic farming is still stuck at around 3% of UK farmland.

I take that seriously. I also think we need to be careful with the question we ask. Can Organic Save British Farming?

Or is that the wrong question, because it quietly suggests that a label can do the job of a functioning food economy.

This is a deliberate follow up to my last post,

Can Organic Save British Farming. In that piece I argued that organic still has teeth as a defined standard, but that the pathway can be out of reach for too many farmers, not because they do not care, but because cashflow and capacity are real constraints.

The comments on that post were the most useful part, because they showed the whole picture.

Katie Allen, LinkedIn

I’m an organic livestock farmer, beef and lamb.

I would argue that the admin is no greater than the records we should be keeping anyway, and less onerous than Red Tractor from what I’m told. However we are 100% pasture fed and zero input, so I would say our record requirements are very simple.

We do direct sell and it makes our messaging super easy, but we also sell to a meat business that buys from us because we are organic, and that certification gives them confidence in the quality of what we are producing. Being able to sell to that meat business has absolutely revolutionised our farm business income.

For us, being organic is absolutely values based, but also underpins our income too.

I think for pork, chicken, dairy or eggs, where your input costs are so much higher, I wonder how anyone can make a good profit, organic or not.

, Substack

Interesting post Helen. As an organic licensee for 20 yrs I must say that I don’t think paying £550 a year for my license and inspection is too expensive when compared with other costs. It’s scaled according to land and size of business.

Everybody goes on about the onerous job of keeping records. Again once you know what records are needed, it’s straightforward, can be entered straight into apps, and makes you organised. Quite frankly they are the type of records that farmers and growers should be keeping so their finger is on the pulse of their business.

Like me knowing that my fields are producing more hay than the average even with no fertiliser, and the hay sells for twice that of conventional hay. And I don’t use fertilisers, glyphosate or pesticides so my biodiversity is booming.

, Substack

My little farm is as organic as you can get but sorry not worth the hassle and expense, the ten or so beef stores I sell a year already get top price in the local market anyway. I don’t need someone else telling me how to take care of my farm. That said I certainly support farms joining these schemes, just it’s not for me.

Lancashire Lamb Boxes, TikTok

Our sales are up, and we aren’t organic. As farmers we need the ability to choose what we feel is actually the best thing to do for the animal, the farm and the farm business. Being organic sticks us in a box where we then lose some of our options. We don’t farm super differently to an organic farm, but we have freedom to do what is best for our situation and no fees for being certified.

Those voices do not cancel each other out. They are the whole picture.

Organic can be a values choice, and it can be a market access tool. It can be a useful discipline. It can also be a dead end, depending on the farm, the sector, the route to market, and how much risk you can carry.

So this post is the zoomed out version. If organic is booming again, what can it genuinely do, and what can it never fix on its own.

One more thing before we get into the detail. The question is not whether organic is growing. The question is why that growth is still not translating into land use change.

What Organic Can Genuinely Offer

Organic does offer real things that matter.

It offers a trust signal in a food system that often feels deliberately hard to read. For a shopper standing in front of a shelf, organic is one of the few labels that still means something fairly consistent. It is not perfect, but it is legible.

It also offers a different approach to inputs. In plain English, organic standards restrict the routine use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. That matters for farms that want to reduce reliance on bought in chemicals, and for people who want fewer residues and fewer externalities.

There is a soil story here too. Organic is not automatically regenerative, and regenerative is not automatically organic, but the overlap is real. When you build fertility through rotations, manures, legumes, and careful grazing, you are usually doing more than chasing yield with a bag and a spray.

On livestock, organic standards can raise the floor. Stocking densities, access to outdoors, and feed rules can push systems away from the worst extremes. It does not mean every organic animal has a perfect life, and it does not mean non organic farmers do not care. It does mean there is a framework that makes certain compromises harder to justify.

Organic can also make your messaging easier.

If you direct sell, the word organic can do a lot of work quickly, because people recognise it and they trust it, even if they have never read the standards.

And for some farms, certification is not mainly about the farm shop customer at all.

It is about access.

It is about being able to sell into a meat business, a processor, or a buyer who needs a clear assurance of quality, and who will pay for it.

That is the best version of the organic promise. A clearer signal, a different input model, a chance to build soil and animal welfare into the business, and a way out of the race to the bottom.

A Premium Label Cannot Fix Squeezed Prices

Here is the part that rarely makes it into the boom narrative.

Organic cannot fix the structural constraints that are breaking farming.

It cannot fix farmgate prices when the supply chain is designed to squeeze producers first.

It cannot fix land access when land is treated as an investment vehicle, and when new entrants are competing with wealth, inheritance, and tax planning.

It cannot fix processing bottlenecks. You can produce organic milk, meat, or grain, but if there are not enough local abattoirs, dairies, mills, and packers that can handle it, you are stuck. You either travel further, accept worse terms, or you do not convert at all.

It cannot fix labour and housing. You cannot build resilient food systems on insecure seasonal labour, unaffordable rural housing, and planning rules that make it hard to house workers or diversify sensibly.

It also cannot guarantee fair margins.

Certification tells you something about the production rules. It does not automatically tell you who holds the power in the contract, who sets the price, or who carries the risk.

A farm can be organic and still be underpaid. A farm can be organic and still be trapped in debt. A farm can be organic and still be one bad year away from collapse.

And this is where Nick Coleman’s comment matters. If you are already selling locally at top price, and you are small enough that your customers know you, then certification may not add value. It may just add cost, paperwork, and a feeling of losing autonomy.

That does not make organic pointless. It makes organic conditional.

The Affordability and Access Problem

This month I have been circling the same uncomfortable truth.

Food ethics on a tight budget is not a moral failure. It is a structural problem.

People are price constrained. They are time constrained. They are exhausted.

So when organic chicken is around three times the price, the headline growth figure does not tell you who is buying it. It tells you that a segment of the market can and will pay.

That is not nothing. Premium demand can keep some farms alive.

But if organic becomes a badge for the comfortable, it will not scale in a way that changes the baseline.

It will sit alongside cheap food that is produced by squeezing farmers, workers, animals, and landscapes.

If we care about farming, food, and fairness, then access has to be part of the conversation, not as an afterthought, but as a design constraint.

Where The Boom story Can Mislead

Growth stats can be true and still mislead.

A large market value sounds like momentum. More than a decade of growth sounds like inevitability.

But growth can hide concentration. It can hide the fact that a small number of brands and retailers capture most of the value. It can hide the fact that premium markets can expand while farmer poverty remains normalised.

It can also hide the conversion gap.

Demand does not automatically translate into viable farm businesses, because the costs and risks are not evenly shared.

If you are a farmer considering conversion, you can face a period where your costs rise and your yields dip, but you cannot always sell at the organic premium yet. That is a cashflow cliff.

If you are a tenant, you may not have the security to invest in long term soil building.

If you are in a region without processing capacity, you may not have a route to market.

And if you are already depleted, you may not have the cash to buy the kit and tools that make lower input systems workable at scale.

The comment threads show something more realistic. For some farms, certification unlocks a buyer and transforms income. For others, the market is already there, and the label adds little. For some shoppers, organic is a trust shortcut. For others, it is simply out of reach.

That is not a contradiction. It is the point.

Scotland as a Case Study

Scotland is a useful case study because it shows how governments are framing organic as part of bigger goals.

The Scottish Organic Action Plan 2026 to 2029 positions organic as a tool for Net Zero and biodiversity outcomes, and as part of Scotland’s global food reputation. It also comes with some concrete movement. Scotland’s organic market value is up 20.6% in five years. Scottish land committed to organic, fully organic or in conversion, grew 26.6% from 103,900 hectares in 2021 to 131,500 hectares in 2024. The Scottish Government has also stated an initial delivery investment of £200,000.

Those are not trivial signals. They say organic is being treated as a policy lever, not just a consumer preference.

But this is where I want to ask the awkward questions.

Is £200,000 remotely commensurate with the scale of the transition being implied.

Who benefits first when organic expands.

Is it the farmer taking the conversion risk, or the retailer and processor capturing a higher margin.

Does the plan tackle market access, processing capacity, and the practical barriers that stop farms converting even when they want to.

Does it address the fact that the hardest part of conversion is often not the standards.

It is the economics, the uncertainty, and the gap between doing the right thing and being paid enough to keep doing it.

If Scotland is serious about organic as part of climate and nature policy, then the plan has to be judged on whether it shifts risk away from farmers and towards the parts of the system that can actually absorb it.

This is what it looks like when organic is treated as infrastructure, not a lifestyle choice. It is also the missing piece in the 3% story.

Here is my bottom line: Organic is a tool, it is not a rescue plan.

It can be part of a better farming future, but only if it is paired with power shifts. In plain English, those shifts look like this

• Farmers need a fair share of the final price, not just a premium label

• We need more local processing and more routes to market, so farms are not trapped by geography

• We need land access that is not dominated by speculation and inheritance

• We need planning and housing rules that let rural communities function, including workers

• We need public investment that matches the scale of the outcomes being asked for, and that supports farmers through the conversion risk

• And we need honesty about what organic can and cannot do

Because if we sell organic as the solution, we set it up to fail. If we treat organic as one lever among many, we give it a chance to do what it does best, building trust, reducing harmful inputs, supporting soil and animal welfare, and creating a market signal that can reward better practice.

Just not on its own.

I would genuinely love to hear your answer to this.

What is the biggest barrier between you and buying the food you actually want to support?

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Next up, I will be sharing my synthesis of the latest Soil Association reporting, and what it does and does not tell us about where organic is heading.

Sources

Scottish Organic Action Plan 2026 - 2029 - Scotland Food & Drink

‘Quality really matters’: why the organic food market is booming again - The Guardian

Organic Market Report 2026 - Soil Association

Feeding Britain - The Sustainable Food Trust

Welcome back to the AgStackers Community Newsletter, a monthly place to spotlight writers sharing thoughtful work about food, farming, and the wider food system.

If you’ve ever tried to find a proper home for farming, gardening, or food system writing on Substack and realised there isn’t really a category for it, you’re in the right place. Whether you write, read, or simply care about how food is grown, you’re invited to join in and help shape what we’re building.

I’m also really excited to say the AgStacker Roundtable is tomorrow. I could not be more excited, because building community always feels like a leap of faith at the start. Thank you to everyone who joined last month, and to everyone who has been replying and showing interest since.

We’ll be running this month’s Roundtable on Zoom again, so we can all talk together properly and it can feel like a real discussion.

When: Sunday 15 March at 2pm UK time (10am Eastern, 9am Central, 8am Mountain, 7am Pacific)

I’ll also post a recording and recap on Substack next week, so if you can’t make it live, you won’t miss out.

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Take your time with the work shared here, and if you feel inspired, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.

AgStacker Of the Month:

This month I’m really pleased to feature as AgStacker of the Month. Cheryl has spent more than two decades running farmers’ markets in London, which means she writes about food from the point where ideals meet reality, where producers, shoppers, prices, seasons, and politics all collide in the same muddy square. She was once dubbed the “Queen of Markets” by the Evening Standard, and instead of shrugging it off she has done the best thing possible with it, she has made it into a lens for telling better, more human food stories.

What I love about Cheryl’s work is how wide her curiosity is, and how grounded it stays. She is interested in land justice and food sovereignty, animal welfare and food miles, but she brings you back to the actual market, the place where local people shop and where the consequences of policy show up in ordinary decisions. Expect interviews with food writers about their favourite markets, producer stories, and food history and politics that never loses sight of the fact that everyone deserves to eat good food. If you want writing that makes you look at your next food shop differently, start here.

Here are a few pieces from Cheryl and other community voices that resonated with me this month:

This is grief written through food, and it is devastating because it is so specific. Cheryl shows how love lives in routines and small purchases and planned treats, and how death turns all of that into evidence, the unopened cheeses, the jam, the “it’s alright” compliment you would give anything to hear again. It is also, quietly, a piece about community, the way a life can be measured by who turns up to eat and remember.

“I ate them resentfully, willing my dad into the room to share their plump sweetness. More foods rattled into my presence reminding me how often food represents love.”

Cheryl Queen of Markets

Past tense birthday cake

It’s a week since my dad died, the day after what would have been his 95th birthday party. We think he had a fall whilst taking out the recycling, a journey to the ground floor that usually took him 15 minutes. After searching every corridor, knocking on doors in the apartments where he and mum live, I finally found him lying on the ground at the bottom…

Read more

4 months ago · 41 likes · 63 comments · Cheryl Queen of Markets

Cheryl has zero patience for “farmers’ market” as a vibe, and I love her for it. This is a clear-eyed look at how the label gets borrowed by markets selling imported produce and wholesale fruit, and how that confusion quietly undercuts the farmers who are actually trying to make a living selling what they grow. It will make you look harder at what is on the first stall, and ask better questions.

“What’s the harm you may ask….it harms farmers who are trying their best to make a living, selling direct to customers. It harms the integrity of real farmers’ markets that have strict rules and stick to them.”

Cheryl Queen of Markets

The non 'farmers' market

Walking towards a farmers’ market, there is always the thrill of anticipation. What will I find? Will there be (insert here) whatever is in season or will it have sold out if I’m arriving later than expected. It’s March and still prime hungry gap territory, but I know I’ll see purple sprouting broccoli, the vegetable that bridges the gap between cold da…

Read more

4 months ago · 28 likes · 13 comments · Cheryl Queen of Markets

This is the antidote to lazy “farmers’ markets are pricey” takes. Cheryl uses Stoke Newington’s all-organic market to show what it looks like when you actually hold the line, clear rules, a level playing field for producers, and a short chain where the money goes to the people doing the work. I also love how practical it is about the trade-offs, what you can’t sell, what you make exceptions for, and why those small decisions are what protect the whole thing.

“Here everyone’s on a level playing field so sometimes I like to describe this market we’ve created this little model it’s a little economic bubble, in this bubble there’s only organic stuff.”

Cheryl Queen of Markets

The only organic farmers' market in the world?

Welcome to today’s piece all about the UK’s sole all organic farmers’ market. It’s free to read, but if you enjoy it and would like to support my writing you can put a tip in the jar…

Read more

a year ago · 25 likes · 20 comments · Cheryl Queen of Markets

From the Community:

This is rural politics written like a short story, funny, tense, and painfully familiar if you’ve ever dealt with rented ground. A young soil conservationist gets pulled into a land dispute, and you can feel the whole mess of pride, paranoia, and “shenanigans” tightening with every line.

“Despite Jeff’s reputation for being slightly excitable, everybody knew he worked hard, and I doubt I have ever met a farmer with a bigger chip on his shoulder. But in choosing farming, he had traded compound interest for compound problems.”

The Misfit Farmer

As the Rural World Turns

I had a sense that I was walking straight into a mess. At this point, I was a young Soil Conservationist for my local Soil and Water Conservation District, and I had met Jeff a time or two at various farming meetings in the county, but this was the first time he had ever called me. I would later come to recognize a familiar pattern of rapid intensificat…

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4 months ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · TheMisfitFarmer

tackles one of those awkward gaps between farming reality and modern food language. This is a calm, practical piece on what “lamb” actually means in meat production, and why the ethical question is less about age and more about how animals are raised and slaughtered.

“I have come to accept that it is not the length of a farm animal’s life that truly matters. Instead, we should collectively focus on the importance of how animals are treated, raised, and slaughtered.”

Radical Farm: Animals, Food and Our Future

We Don't Eat Baby Lambs

This article by Abey Scaglione was first printed in the January 2026 edition of…

Read more

4 months ago · 5 likes · Abey Rae Scaglione

This is one of those pieces that changes how you see a supermarket staple. lays out the scale of shrimp farming, explains what eyestalk ablation actually is, and makes the case that better welfare is not just possible but often better for producers too, if we stop falling for “welfare washing.” I’d genuinely love to read more about what high-welfare shrimp farming looks like in practice, on a real farm, from breeding through to slaughter.

“Eyestalk ablation (ESA) occurs by cutting, crushing, or burning one or both eyestalks. It is carried out without pain relief and causes extreme distress to the animal, as indicated by their aversive behavioural responses.”

Why Welfare Matters

What's the (shr)impact?

Every year, over 440 billion shrimp are farmed around the world. That’s more than five times the total number of all farmed land animals combined. Yet, despite these staggering numbers and recognition of their sentience, shrimp are among the most overlooked animals in our food system. Welfare concerns are rampant—and largely ignored…

Read more

4 months ago · 15 likes · 8 comments · Demi 🐾

lays out the case for local meat processing as a food security issue, not a niche farming debate. Using New Hampshire’s HB 396 as the hook, he argues that decades of federal rules have centralised slaughter, hollowed out local infrastructure, and left small farms and consumers with fewer choices and higher prices.

“The New Hampshire bill reflects a revolt by states against longstanding federal laws that have centralized U.S. meat processing, crushed small producers, and prevented citizens from transacting with one another.”

Small Farm Republic

Live free or starve!

New Hampshire’s House passed a bill on January 7 that would allow farmers to slaughter and process livestock on the farm and use local “custom” slaughterhouses without a USDA inspection. This would permit direct-to-consumer sales of individual cuts of meat, but only within New Hampshire…

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4 months ago · 34 likes · 6 comments · John Klar

This is a smart, readable dispatch from the London Vet Show that gets past the hype and into the real question, what happens when AI starts mediating the human animal relationship on farms. sketches both the promise (better monitoring, earlier interventions) and the risk (tech enabling more intensity), then lands on the big issue, regulation is not keeping up.

“We are at a crossroads I think. There’s one positive direction where we genuinely put animal welfare first – where this technology is about empowering farmers to make better decisions.

“But there’s also the dystopian direction – where it allows farming to become more intensive and, in effect, takes the human out.”

Theodore Whyte

AI on Farms – “A Wild West”

AI on Farms – “A Wild West…

Read more

4 months ago · 2 comments · Theodore Whyte

This is a quietly beautiful reminder that resilience is built in tiny, unglamorous habits. writes about heat, water, and the daily choreography of keeping a garden alive, and somehow makes buckets under the sink feel like a kind of devotion.

“In our kitchen sink sits a “sink tub” - a smaller tub inside the sink that catches all the water you use throughout the day. I’m careful to collect as much as possible. It’s amazing how it adds up.”

makes a clean, persuasive link between food security as a principle and the reality of who gets protected when policy gets written. The piece is part call to action, part reality check, and it lands hardest where she points out that legal immunity is not a neutral move, it is the state choosing who carries the risk.

“Bayer has spent over $9 million lobbying for exemption from liability for harm its chemicals like glyphosate might cause. The Constitution guarantees a trial for those who are harmed.”

Raw Milk Mama

Trump Wants Immunity for Chemical Companies and for Americans to Make More Glyphosate

Read more

4 months ago · 20 likes · 19 comments · Liz Reitzig

This is one of those posts that stays with you because it refuses the easy story. names the institutional failure without turning his son into a symbol, and he shows how recovery can look like tiny, stubborn steps, a safe place, a bit of paid work, and adults who actually listen. Farming is not presented as a cure, more like a bridge back to confidence and belonging.

“As time went on Ivan would get out of the car more often and even help for half an hour mulching trees or removing old plastic tree guards. This may not seem like much but he had had so little exercise for more than a year, and this was really the only time we got him out of the house and active.”

Ben Raskin

Recovery from burnout, a child's story

It’s taken me a bit longer to get this post out, as it is the first time to publicly share the journey my son Ivan has been on, and the part that farming played in his recovery. Despite our anger at how the school institution let him down, my wife and I have so far channelled that anger and energy into supporting his recovery rather than fighting the sy…

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4 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Ben Raskin

This is a gentle but bracing dismantling of the self sufficiency badge, especially for anyone who has ever confused doing it all with being strong. makes the case that the old ways were never solitary, they were networks, and that real resilience is built when food, skills, and help are allowed to circulate instead of being carried like a private test of worth.

“What truly sustains- what has always sustained- is interdependence. The web of relationships that allows each household to be capable without being alone.”

Seasons of a Simple Life

The Lie of Self-Sufficiency

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt drawn to a time long before my own. I’ve always felt out of place in our modern society. The pace, the urgency, and the constant churn of ever-changing technology- it has never quite fit me. Or perhaps I have never quite fit it…

Read more

5 months ago · 154 likes · 43 comments · Seasons of a Simple Life

This one has that rare mix of bite and tenderness. Adam starts with resentment and rotisserie chicken, then quietly flips the whole thing into a love letter to the kind of intelligence you only notice when you stop treating farming like a “sector” and start listening to the people inside it. It is also a reminder that agriculture holds a lot of people up, even when they are too tired or angry to admit it.

“Some of the most pungent brainpower hides in farmyards and old quonsets, and you only find it if you shut up long enough to listen.”

Farming Full-Time

Pungent Brainpower

Barn animals smell like barn animals right up until you put them over an open flame. Then they smell like something else entirely…

Read more

4 months ago · 23 likes · 3 comments · Adam T Kuznia

AgStackers is a community effort, and your voice is what will shape it.

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The Story You Are Being Sold

If you have been watching the UK news, you might have seen the protests and assumed this is mainly about inheritance tax. That is part of it.

Farmers have been protesting the inheritance tax changes, and many are still protesting even after the small adjustments that were meant to calm things down. But there has been another blow since then.

A few weeks ago, Defra published the latest update to the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the main scheme in England that is meant to pay farmers for environmental work.

This is where the news coverage often falls short. It tends to flatten everything into one story, as if all farms are the same and all farmers are angry for the same reasons.

They are not. These changes affect all farmers, but not equally.

Not all farming systems are treated equally by policy, and the most damaging effects fall mainly on smaller scale, high welfare, agroecological, nature friendly farms. That matters for consumers, because these are often the farms trying to produce food in ways that protect soils, wildlife, water, and animal welfare.

The Simple Version

In England, the main post Brexit farm payment scheme is the Sustainable Farming Incentive, or SFI.

Defra has just announced a new version for 2026, and it is being sold as a reset after last year’s chaos.

But the loudest signal in the fine print is that government is trying to control the budget by controlling who gets through the door.

There is a priority application window for smaller farms, and the biggest claims will be capped. At the same time, farms and growers under 3 hectares are excluded entirely.

That is not a technical tweak. It is a policy choice about which kinds of farming count.

What SFI Is Meant To Do

SFI is a government payment scheme in England that pays farmers to do specific environmental actions on their land.

In theory, it is a simple trade. Government sets out a list of actions it wants, farmers choose what fits their system, and payments help cover the cost of doing that work.

The actions are meant to deliver public goods, things like healthier soils, more wildlife, cleaner rivers, and lower chemical use.

The problem is not the idea. The problem is that the scheme keeps changing while farm businesses are expected to make multi year decisions, and that the rules increasingly favour the farms with the most land and the most admin capacity.

What Changed, And Who Gets Shut Out

Here are the main updates:

• The new offer will have 71 actions, down from 102. There will be two application windows, June 2026 for smaller farms (defined as 3 to 50 hectares) and for those not currently in a live ELM revenue agreement, and September 2026 for everyone else.

• Total agreement value will be capped at £100,000 per year. Some arable payment rates will be reduced.

• Moorland actions will see increased payment rates, and the uplift will apply to existing agreements that already include those actions.

• A minimum 3 hectare eligibility threshold has been reintroduced, which means farms and growers operating on fewer than 3 hectares will be excluded.

Why 3 Hectares Is Not “Small” In The Real World

If you have never farmed, 3 hectares might sound tiny, and it is.

But it is also big enough to include a lot of serious small farms, and big enough to exclude a lot of market gardens, community supported agriculture farms, and small mixed holdings.

These are often the farms that grow vegetables, employ local people, raise high welfare livestock, and sell direct to the public. They are also the farms that tend to deliver the kind of environmental outcomes the scheme claims to want.

So when government excludes them, it sends a message that small scale food production is not worth the paperwork.

That is why people are angry, because it suggests the system is being designed around what is easiest to administer, not what is most valuable for food resilience.

The Trust Problem

Farmers are being asked to make multi year decisions about rotations, stocking, tenancies, and investment. But the scheme keeps changing.

Last year, SFI was suddenly closed when many people were still preparing applications. Now Defra is trying to prevent another sudden closure by using application windows.

That might help, but it does not guarantee funding. Some groups are warning that the scheme still creates jeopardy because it remains first come, first served.

There is also a very practical issue. The current SFI IT system cannot accept an SFI26 application on land that is still under an active agreement, which can create gaps in income and environmental delivery for farms whose existing agreements expire out of sync with the new windows.

If you are a consumer, here is the translation:

Read more

Food ethics can sound like a luxury hobby, not because people do not care, but because most of us are trying to feed ourselves and our families inside real constraints. Money, time, access, energy, and whatever else life is throwing at you all shape what is possible, and it helps to say that plainly. Ethical eating is not a test you pass or fail. It is a set of trade offs, and the only place to start is with the life you actually have.

Start With The Constraint

If you are on a tight budget, the most ethical thing you can do is keep yourself fed. If the cost of living has squeezed your choices down to what you can afford, the most ethical thing you can do is stop blaming yourself for a supply chain you did not design, because that is not an excuse, it is the starting point for any change that lasts.

Choices For Real Life

When people say “vote with your wallet”, it can land as judgement, especially when money is tight, and it can also slide into a kind of ideology where the answer is always “eat less meat and buy direct”, as if everyone has the same budget, the same kitchen, the same time, and a local farm shop on the way home.

I do believe in high welfare farming, seasonal food, and buying direct when you can, because those choices can keep better systems alive, but I also know they are not always available, and they are not always affordable. So here is a gentler version that is designed for real life rather than for proving a point.

Pick one thing you can do more often, and one thing you can do less often, and treat it as a way to make your food spend work harder, while nudging the needle towards the kind of food system you would actually like to live in.

More often might be:

• Cook one extra meal from scratch each week.

• Buy seasonal veg when it is cheapest.

• Use beans, lentils, eggs or cheaper cuts of meat to stretch meals.

• If you can, buy one thing direct now and then, like eggs, mince, or a veg box split with a friend.

Less often might be:

• Ultra processed snacks that cost a lot for what they give you.

• Takeaways that cost more than they satisfy.

• Cheap meat every day, if that is currently your norm.

None of this makes you a better person. It is simply a way of making change feel possible, and therefore more likely to stick.

Ethical Meat Is Not A Slogan

I had a really good conversation this week with about ethical and sustainable meat, and one thing that came through strongly for me is how frustrating the debate becomes when it turns into identity, as if you are either “a good person who never eats meat” or “a good person who defends farmers”.

Real life is more complicated than that, and if you eat meat, the question is not how to win the argument online, it is whether the animal had a life you can stand behind, and whether the system you are buying into is one you would be comfortable showing to a child.

That is why I keep coming back to “less but better”, not as a moral badge, but as a practical route to reducing harm.

The Ads Are Doing A Job, Even If You Hate Them

This week the pig industry responded to a London Underground ad campaign by Animal Justice Project, which placed 22 large posters across 12 stations urging commuters to stop eating pork. The ads are designed to shock, using a piglet next to a puppy, and a sow in a farrowing crate with the line “If she were a dog, we’d call it abuse.”

If you felt defensive reading that, that makes sense, and I am not asking you to pick a side so much as to sit with the question of what standards we think are acceptable, and who gets to decide.

I agree with the National Pig Association that this is emotional pressure, and it is not always well received, but I also think it matters that consumers see what industrial livestock systems can look like, because labelling does not reliably tell you, and it matters to say clearly that this is not what all pig farms are like.

I am not interested in a culture war between vegans and farmers. I am interested in shrinking the space where cruelty can hide, and widening the space where better farming can survive, and I think high welfare livestock farming and veganism often have more in common than either side wants to admit. Even if the diet choice is the obvious difference.

Buying Local Is Not A Lifestyle, It Is A Practice

Buying direct and buying seasonal can be one of the most meaningful ways to keep high welfare farming alive. But I also understand why it can look inflated in price if you are used to supermarket prices, because supermarket prices are not the true cost of producing food. They are the result of a system that pushes costs and risk down the chain until someone else absorbs them.

If you want to support local food without blowing your week apart, start small, and treat it as a habit you build rather than a lifestyle you perform.

• Find one local producer you can use once a month

• Buy one item you already buy anyway, like eggs

• Split a bulk buy with a friend

• Use a farm shop as a top up rather than a full weekly shop

Even one regular purchase helps a farm.

Choice Matters, But The System Sets The Terms

It is true that individual choices matter, and it is also true that the system is designed to make the cheapest option the easiest option, so if you are doing your best and still buying what you can afford, you are not failing. You are living inside a food system that pushes risk and cost down the chain, and that shows up in ordinary ways.

Households absorb higher prices and smaller pack sizes, and then get told it is a personal failure if they cannot “choose better”. Farmers are asked to carry price volatility and rising compliance costs while being paid as if food is just another commodity, and workers across the chain are kept on low wages so the shelf price stays competitive. Animals absorb the welfare cuts when margins are squeezed and speed becomes the priority, and if we want change that lasts, we have to deal with root causes, not just swap one shopping list for another.

That is why food ethics is not just about shopping. It is about power, labour, land, and who gets to absorb the damage.

What Matters Most

This is not about being the “right kind” of eater. It is about making harm harder to hide, and making better food and farming easier to choose, because small, repeatable shifts matter, and so does pushing for the rules and incentives that make those shifts possible.

If you want to comment, I am interested in your pushback as well as your agreement, because the point here is not to win, it is to get closer to what is actually happening.

Leave a comment

I write Me My Pigs and I for people who care about farming, food, and fairness, but do not want to be sold a fantasy.

If you are a free subscriber, thank you for being here. If you want to support this work, you can upgrade to paid, because paid support helps me do the deeper work, which includes the AgStacker roundtable, report syntheses, and space to approach messy questions with compassion, from a farmer’s perspective.

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If just five percent of my readers tipped £1 or $1, this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

Hello, friends!

As March begins, I want to take a moment to say thank you, truly, for being here. This space and the work I do would not exist without your support. I am still finding my feet on Substack, which means learning, experimenting, and occasionally getting it wrong, but knowing you are along for the ride makes every step feel less daunting and …

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I am worried about the delivery of this strategy, not the press release version, not the version that reads well in a report, but the version that has to survive the real world. Where welfare is either protected by hard rules and proper enforcement, or it gets traded away, one compromised decision at a time.

I am also tired of the way animal welfare appears in the media, because it is so often framed as a shocking one off, a rare lapse, a single bad farm, a single bad abattoir, a single bad decision! When anyone who has been paying attention knows that these stories keep happening time after time, and far too often the same offenders appear again and again, because the system is built to absorb outrage and carry on.

If we are serious about animal welfare, we have to stop pretending that cruelty is an accident.

It is baked into systems that prioritise speed, volume, and low cost over the basic needs of living animals.

I am passionate about animal welfare in farming because I have lived it, and because I learned as a pig farmer that welfare is not a compromise, it is the quality of life an animal has before death. It is shaped by the choices we make about space, handling, feed, shelter, health, boredom, fear, and whether the animal gets to behave like the animal it is.

There is a moment that stays with me because it captures the difference between a welfare mindset and a control mindset in a way that no policy document ever will.

On the rare occasion we needed a vet, one of our pigs, Henry, needed treating, and the vet asked for a crush to restrain him. When I said we did not have one, she defaulted to what she knew, which was chasing him around stressing him out and stressing herself out, turning a simple intervention into a fight.

I protested because it was unnecessary and becoming inhumane for me. I knew Henry and I gave him time out and back scratches, and within minutes he calmed down and lay on the ground grunting happily while I scratched his belly, and at that point the vet could jab him and he did not even notice.

The Vet said she learned a valuable lesson that day, which was to listen to the owners and not just the textbook.

I think about that often, because the lesson is bigger than one pig and one vet, and it is bigger than one farm.

Welfare is not only about the absence of pain in the final moment, it is about the presence of calm, trust, and decent handling across a whole life, and the systems we build either make that possible or they make it impossible.

Yes, higher welfare is often harder work, it is slower, it requires attention, it can mean more labour, more planning, more patience, and more humility. But in my opinion animals are not beneath than us just because we consume them, and if anything they deserve more respect, because they sustain us through nourishment. The least we can do is make sure that the life we take is not a life we have already made miserable.

This is why I cannot look at the Animal Welfare Strategy as a nice to have, because it is not a branding exercise and it is not a cultural signal, it is supposed to be a line in the sand.

And it is why I keep coming back to pigs, because pigs are regularly abused in our current system, and the public is still sold pork under welfare assured labels that are meant to reassure, not to reveal.

This is the tension I cannot ignore.

We need to ban factory farming and the methods that allow cruelty to be treated as normal, which means cage free hens, a ban on farrowing crates, an end to high concentration CO₂ stunning for pigs, and a serious push to stop painful procedures being treated as standard practice.

But if we raise our standards and still allow cheap, substandard imports produced to lower welfare standards to flood the market, we will cripple British farmers who are asked to comply. We will offshore the harm while congratulating ourselves for being decent.

That is not progress. That is displacement.

The strategy sets out big ambitions for England through to 2030, it talks about enforcement, it talks about support, it talks about an integrated systems approach, and I want to believe it. But I have learned the hard way that published is not the same thing as done, and that the gap between those two words is where animals suffer.

This is why the EFRA Committee session at Oxford Real Farming Conference stayed with me, because when the question came about the strategy and the commitments inside it, the response was relief that it is finally out, and then a blunt acknowledgement.

So here is what I am watching, not as a tidy checklist, but as the signals that will tell us whether this strategy is going to change lives, or whether it is going to change language.

I am watching whether cage free and out of crates comes with dates, money, and a plan that farmers can actually live with, because this is where welfare becomes concrete and cost becomes concrete, and without a properly funded transition you do not get better welfare, you get a slow motion crisis where the careful are squeezed out and the careless survive.

I am watching whether trade policy matches the welfare ambition, because this is the make or break point, and I do not mean warm words about not lowering standards, I mean enforceable equivalence that stops low welfare production being imported to undercut higher welfare production, because if we are serious about welfare then we stop importing the opposite and pretending it does not count.

I am watching whether enforcement is treated as central rather than ceremonial, because rules without enforcement are a confidence trick, they create a two tier system where the people who try to do the right thing carry the cost, and the people who cut corners carry on, and the public is left with a story about progress that does not match what is happening on the ground.

I am watching whether pig stunning moves beyond expert concern into actual change, because the strategy itself acknowledges the welfare issues with high concentration CO₂ stunning and points to higher welfare alternatives, and that is one of those moments where we have to decide whether we are going to keep saying we know, or whether we are going to say we will, and then do it.

I am watching whether welfare labelling becomes real enough to reward better farming, because if consumers cannot tell the difference, higher welfare becomes a private cost with no public reward, and we cannot keep asking farmers to carry the burden of public values while the market keeps paying them as if those values do not exist.

I am watching whether the strategy tackles the wider direction of travel on intensification, because you can improve welfare at the margins while still building a system that concentrates animals, concentrates risk, and concentrates harm, and if we do not name that trade off honestly then welfare policy becomes a fig leaf for more of the same.

If this strategy is going to deliver welfare gains without hollowing out British farming, a few things need to be true at the same time.

• Welfare uplift has to be matched by trade policy that prevents undercutting.

• Transition has to be funded and practical rather than aspirational.

• Enforcement has to be resourced rather than outsourced to the conscience of the sector.

• And the market has to be made to reward better outcomes rather than simply demanding them while shopping for the cheapest version.

I want this strategy to work.

I want fewer animals living in systems that rely on confinement and routine harm.

But I also want us to stop pretending that welfare can be improved in isolation from trade, from power in the supply chain, and from the basic question of whether the people producing our food can survive under the rules we set.

If we do not line those pieces up, we will not get higher welfare.

We will get higher standards on paper and lower standards imported in practice.

If just five percent of my readers tipped £1 or $1, this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

Launching something new always makes me a bit nervous.

You can plan the links and the Zoom room and the words you want to say, but you cannot plan the moment where you click start meeting and wait to see if anyone comes.

So I want to start with a simple thank you.

Our very first AgStacker Roundtable happened on Zoom, it ran for just over an hour, it was informal in the best way, and two people showed up.

joined from Massachusetts, a food and farming advocate who cares deeply about how we talk about land, labour, and dignity.

joined from North-East Missouri, a regenerative farmer with the kind of lived experience that makes you listen more carefully.

That is not a crowd.

But it is a beginning, and it felt like the right kind of beginning.

A Few Takeaways From The Conversation

• Substack feels different because it is slower, and because it rewards attention rather than performance. You can write a piece that is thoughtful and specific and not designed to win an argument in the comments, and it can still find its people.

• Community is not the same thing as an audience. Community is what happens when people feel safe enough to speak honestly, and when there is a bit of continuity so you are not always starting from scratch.

• Farming can be a quiet form of rebellion. Not the loud kind that needs an enemy, but the steady kind that keeps choosing care, skill, and responsibility in a world that often pushes the opposite.

• Getting people back onto the land is not a slogan, it is a practical question. We talked about pathways that already exist, including WWOOF, and what it takes for those pathways to feel realistic rather than romantic.

• The best conversations happen when nobody is trying to sound clever. There was a lot of listening, a lot of curiosity, and a shared sense that food and farming writing does not have to be either polished PR or constant crisis.

• Consistency matters. People want a reliable drop in space, something they can plan around, even if the session itself stays informal.

• There is appetite for sharing resources and articles, talking through what is in the AgStacker newsletter each month, and experimenting with small features like an AgStacker of the Month, plus the occasional guest expert when it fits.

Tim ’s Recap

Tim has written his own recap of the session, and I am genuinely grateful he took the time.

If you want another perspective on what we covered, and the tone of the conversation, you can read it here:

Grange Hall

AgStacker Roundtable Premiere

It was exciting. I was invited to spend sometime yesterday morning with Helen Freeman Helen Freeman and Kody Karr Lessons from the Land talking about ourselves and what we do here on Substack and on the farm, at the first Roundtable discussion organized by Helen. Helen is in the UK raising pigs and publishes a monthly Ag Stacker Community Newsletter that I cross post here on Grange Hall…

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4 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Tim Connolly

Keeping It Accessible

I forgot to hit record on this first one, which is very on brand for building something new in public.

From here on I will record each Roundtable and share a recap afterwards, so even if you cannot make it live because of time zones, work, kids, animals, or just life, you can still follow along and take something useful from it.

What We Are Building

AgStacker exists because farming and food systems writing on Substack can feel scattered.

There are brilliant writers here, and I mean that in the most ordinary way, people putting in real hours to make sense of land, weather, markets, policy, animals, labour, and the emotional weight of feeding other people.

Some of us are writing from farms and smallholdings, some from kitchens and classrooms, some from offices where the food system is mostly spreadsheets and meetings, and some from places where we are trying to find our way back to the land after years away.

What we often do not have is a shared place to land, a space where you can show up as you are, talk about what you are working on, and be met with curiosity rather than performance pressure.

That is what the Roundtable is for.

It is a room for people who care about food and farming to think out loud together, to swap notes on what we are reading, to share resources that actually help, and to build enough familiarity that we start recognising each other s work and sending readers across the gaps.

Over time I want this to develop a gentle rhythm that makes it easier to join in.

A predictable time each month.

A light structure that keeps the conversation moving without making it feel formal.

A habit of sharing links and articles, and talking through what is in the AgStacker newsletter each month, so the Roundtable and the newsletter start to support each other.

We also talked about small experiments that could make this feel more like a real home on Substack, things like discussing the featured AgStacker of the Month, and occasional guest experts when it fits, not as a big shiny event, but as a way of widening the circle and learning from people who are doing the work.

My hope is that, slowly, this becomes something you can rely on.

Not because it is perfect, but because it is consistent, and because it is built around real people rather than algorithms.

If you were at the first session, thank you for helping set that tone.

If you were not, you are still very much part of what we are building.

Next Date And How To Join

Let s keep the topic open for now, because I want it to be shaped by what you need.

The next AgStacker Roundtable will be:

• Sunday 15 March 2026

• 1pm London time

• 8am US Eastern

• On Zoom

• For paid subscribers

The community newsletter will remain free for everyone to read and enjoy, and to feel part of, and if you missed February s AgStacker, here is the link, please enjoy.

If you are a paid subscriber, you will get an email from me with the Zoom link and you are welcome to drop in, listen, speak, or just be in the room.

If you cannot attend live, you can still follow along through the recording and recap.

Paid subscriptions are what keep AgStacker visible and independent, and they are what make it possible for me to keep doing the behind the scenes work of gathering links, reading widely, and making sure this space does not disappear when life gets busy.

If AgStacker has been useful to you, upgrading to paid is the simplest way to support it.

Subscribe now

Two Questions For You

What would you most want from the Roundtable over the next few months?

And what would make AgStacker feel more like a real category on Substack, rather than a handful of writers who happen to be in the same place?

Leave a comment with your thoughts, this community is shaped and growing because of you, and I will use what you tell me to shape the next session.

Leave a comment

Welcome back to the AgStackers Community Newsletter, a monthly place to spotlight writers sharing thoughtful work about food, farming, and the wider food system.

If you’ve ever tried to find a proper home for farming, gardening, or food system writing on Substack and realised there isn’t really a category for it, you’re in the right place. Whether you write, read, or simply care about how food is grown, you’re invited to join in and help shape what we’re building.

This month I’m also really excited to say the first AgStacker Roundtable is tomorrow.

I could not be more excited, and if I’m honest, a bit nervous too, because building community always feels like a leap of faith at the start. Here’s to trying anyway, and to seeing who shows up!

With the interest so far, I’m going to run the Roundtable on Zoom rather than Substack Live, so we can all talk together properly and it can feel like a real discussion. I’ll email paid subscribers with clear instructions for joining, so keep an eye out for that.

I’ll also post a recording and recap on Substack next week, so if you can’t make it, you won’t miss out.

The Roundtable is for paid subscribers, but if you’d like to join this first one I’m running a 20% off promotion until tomorrow.

Get 20% off for 1 year

Take your time with the work shared here, and if you feel inspired, please join the conversation. This is your community as much as mine.

AgStacker Of the Month:

This month I’m delighted to feature as AgStacker of the Month. Tanja’s writing blends hard earned experience with real humility, the kind that makes you feel braver about trying things and more willing to slow down and pay attention. After a life changing accident she stepped away from her work as an educator and consultant and found her way back to the land as a market gardener, and you can feel that teacher’s instinct in everything she shares.

What I love most is how practical and context led she is. Tanja shifted from the conventional farming she grew up with in Wisconsin to a no till approach, refining it into what she calls low input gardening, living pathways, and self sowing cultures. Her weekly newsletter is driven by what is actually happening in her garden, with a particular love for fall and winter veg, and she is not afraid to challenge bad advice when it spreads online. If you want gardening guidance that is grounded, thoughtful, and quietly confidence building, start here.

Here are a few pieces from Tanja and other community voices that resonated with me this month:

Tanja’s “low input” approach is the antidote to expensive, performative gardening. She shares the hard lessons that pushed her away from clean beds and bought in fixes, and towards living paths, self sowing crops, and a system that gets more resilient the less you interfere.

“To the untrained eye, this might look like a nightmare, but it wasn’t. It was the greatest gift a garden can give: self-sown crops. I had selected plants for seed-saving in this plot and harvested the seeds in mid-summer. All of those beautiful greens had reappeared, thanks to the many rogue seeds that had escaped.”

Sow, Harvest, Savor: Tanja's Garden

Low-Input Gardening

Before this newsletter gets going I want to thank you, dear subscribers! I’ve launched newsletters, websites and social media pages before, I’ve even published books, but none of those experiences co…

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a year ago · 22 likes · 2 comments · Tanja Westfall-Greiter

This is such a simple idea, and it feels like gold once you read it. Tanja treats the garden like a classroom and keeps a running “lessons learned” page each year, so her future self is not reinventing the wheel every season, especially when timing really matters for fall and winter crops.

“A garden is a classroom without walls, full of teachers.”

Sow, Harvest, Savor: Tanja's Garden

Lessons Learned in the Garden

Dear readers, thank you for being here! This week’s newsletter is short and sweet. Somehow the time change gave me an hour and I still had less time today…

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8 months ago · 26 likes · 17 comments · Tanja Westfall-Greiter

Tanja does not just defend no dig, she explains it, and she does it with the kind of clarity that cuts through influencer noise. If you have ever wondered whether minimal disturbance really matters, this is a firm, evidence led case for treating soil as a living ecosystem, not just “substrate”.

“No, it is not a trend. Some social media gods might have presented it as such, but low-till or minimal tillage is a viable, economical, and ethical approach to growing food.”

Sow, Harvest, Savor: Tanja's Garden

Minimal Soil Disturbance Means Maximum Life

Welcome to new subscribers and thank you to my readers! If your email provider has truncated the text or photos, click on the title to view it in your browser. This week’s newsletter is more of an ar…

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5 months ago · 45 likes · 36 comments · Tanja Westfall-Greiter

From the Community:

Sam cuts through the homesteading aesthetic and makes it feel accessible again. This is a grounded reminder that it is not about land or the perfect set up, it is about the daily shift from consuming to making, learning, and doing.

“It’s that shift in perspective—from consumer to creator—that makes someone a homesteader. Not the acreage. Not the livestock. Not the big farmhouse in the country.”

Maine Homestead Life

From Consumer to Creator: What Homesteading REALLY Is

Homesteading is all the rage these days, with every Tom, Dick, and Harriet wanting to be the next big-name influencer. Scroll through social media and you’ll see perfectly curated shots of sourdough loaves, chicken coops bathed in golden light, and Mason jars lined up like soldiers on farmhouse shelves. It’s aspirational, aesthetic, and—let’s be honest…

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5 months ago · 24 likes · 2 comments

Kody turns a snowstorm feeding job into a proper lesson in on farm fertility. If you like the practical maths of regeneration, this is a great read on how unrolling hay can build soil, balance nutrients, and nudge pastures towards more diversity.

“Hay imports nutrients from other farms in a complete nutritional profile that synthetic fertilizers cannot compete with.”

Lessons from the Land

Unrolling Hay

After having a week of 50-60 degree weather in January winter is back in northeast Missouri. The latest snowpocalypse dropped 4-5 inches of fresh powder on the farm yesterday, others south of us were hit with some severe snow and ice storms. The ewes are rather adapt at digging through snow and finding stockpiled forages to get them through. But with a …

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5 months ago · 11 likes · Kody M Karr

This is the kind of post you bookmark and come back to. John has built a genuinely useful, UK leaning resource guide for anyone trying to integrate trees with crops or livestock, whether you are planning a farm scale system or just experimenting in a garden.

“This is a living document, a constantly evolving reference list for anyone who is contemplating, planning or implementing the growing of crops and/or livestock with trees, from farm scale enterprises to domestic scale gardens and allotments.”

The Woodland Orchard

Agroforestry & Silvohorticulture Resource Guide

Introduction…

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5 months ago · 24 likes · The Woodland Orchard

Rachel writes from a rare vantage point, finance brain and farming boots, and asks the awkward question many people dodge. If regenerative systems work ecologically, what happens when they hit a food economy built to reward volume, predictability, and speed.

“Regenerative projects do not fail because they are weak. They struggle because our food system rewards volume efficiency, not ecosystem health.”

Rachel Dias

Farming against the spreadsheet

After many years working in finance and commercial strategy before becoming a farmer, the first thing I do when I encounter a regenerative project I’m excited about is run the numbers in my head…

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5 months ago · 14 likes · 6 comments · Rachel Dias

Jackie’s week is pure smallholding reality, mud, fencing chaos, lambing nerves, and that creeping sense that spring will suddenly arrive and you will be behind. Then she swerves into something deeper, a fierce little reminder to keep doing the work for the sake of the work, not for the audience.

“I have realised that my focus must be [almost] entirely on the being and the doing, and not going beyond. The Machine/The Devil would have me set aside my spinning wheel, pause in my writing, delay yet further my growing - in order to consider how I will sell or share or disseminate the resulting product.”

Smallholder Journal

Rain

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5 months ago · 9 likes · 2 comments · Jackie Bridgen

This one is for anyone who is good at winning but quietly feels hollow anyway. Daniel uses farming as a mirror for high performance culture and makes a simple case that a lot of us are not burnt out, we are underfed, not in calories, but in connection.

“You are not broken. You are not ungrateful. You are not lazy. You might simply be… underfed. Not in calories. In connection.”

TRY - The Regenerative You

The Reconnection Nobody Teaches High Performers

Shaan Puri has never set foot on a farm…

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5 months ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Daniel P. Hirschi

This is funny, blunt, and genuinely important. Kevin digs into a problem most of us are only just clocking, microplastics in municipal compost, and makes a strong case for on farm fertility you can actually trace, even when the rules make it harder.

“We have been sold a bill of goods that doesn’t do what they promised. And they are contaminating the compost supply chain. Most larger organic growers have to buy compost and the municipal made compost is cheap and easy.”

Cattle Culture

Holy Shit, Part Doo

Holy Shit, Part Doo…

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5 months ago · 26 likes · 13 comments · Cattle Culture

AgStackers is a community effort, and your voice is what will shape it.

Get involved

Reply to this post with your links, ideas, and anything you want me to see for next month’s AgStacker. If you’ve published something you’re proud of, or you’ve read a piece you think the community would love, drop it in the comments and I’ll pull from there when I’m curating the next newsletter.

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Please share this post so the brilliant work featured in this newsletter reaches more readers, and so more ag writers can find their people here.

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Support AgStackers and join the Roundtable

If you find value in this community and want to help it grow, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support keeps AgStackers thriving and independent, and it also gives you access to the monthly AgStacker Roundtable if you’d like a more connected space to talk, swap ideas, and help shape what we build next.

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Thanks for being part of the community. Let’s see where we can take this together.

Until next month,

H x

If just 5% of my readers tipped £1/$1 this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.

Tip Jar

A report like this is easy to skim. You see the headline number and you move on.

This one models what could happen if Great Britain ends up applying EU decisions on plant protection products through a future UK-EU SPS agreement (Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement), and if that alignment is done in a way that creates a sudden cliff edge.

On paper, the headline figures are hard to ignore.

The report suggests farm sector profit could drop by £500 million to £810 million in the first year.

Before we go any further, I want to be clear about where I am coming from. I am not defending chemical dependence. I am arguing for a managed transition.

Because if you remove tools faster than we can replace them with better systems, the pressure does not disappear. It moves. And it usually moves onto standards, onto small farms, and onto consumers.

This report was commissioned by CropLife UK and written by The Andersons Centre, and it is clear about what it is and what it is not. That does not make it worthless. But it does mean we should read it with our eyes open.

It is a desk based model built from public data and interviews with agronomists and industry experts. It is not a set of UK field trials where crops are grown under EU only rules and compared side by side. It also only models a selection of crops, and the authors say that means the totals are likely to be an underestimate rather than a full picture. It also matters that the headline loss is tied to a specific policy design choice.

The baseline scenario is an immediate cliff edge where EU decisions and MRLs override existing GB decisions at the point an SPS agreement starts, including retrospective alignment of the divergence that has built up since Brexit.

That is a worst case by design.

And the report’s own mitigation options, delay or managed alignment through renewals, are really an argument about sequencing.

Not an argument that change is impossible. If you stop there, it sounds like a farming story. But it is not really. It is a supermarket story. It is a food system story. And it is about what happens when policy is treated like a switch you can flick without consequences.

Because the headline figures are only the surface. The real question is what sits underneath them, and who ends up carrying the risk when the rules change.

What Plant Protection Means, Without The Jargon

Plant protection is the umbrella term for the tools and rules that stop crops being wiped out by weeds, insects, and disease. That includes chemical pesticides. But it also includes biological products, seed treatments, and the practical permissions that decide what can be used, when, and on which crops.

This is about regulation and risk management as much as it is about chemistry. When a tool is removed, farmers do not stop trying to grow food. They adapt. Sometimes that adaptation looks like higher costs, more labour, more machinery passes, different rotations, lower yields, or more waste. And those costs do not stay on farm. They show up somewhere else: tighter margins, higher prices and more imports. Or in a quiet lowering of standards that nobody advertises.

Why This Matters To People Who Do Not Think About Farming

The report is about a possible UK-EU deal that could change which plant protection tools are available in Great Britain.

The authors focus on one particular risk. A future SPS agreement could create one shared rulebook, and the UK could choose to apply EU decisions not just going forward, but backwards too. They call that retrospective alignment.

In plain terms, it means products that are currently legal in Great Britain could become unavailable quickly, not because the science suddenly changed, but because the rulebook did.

The report argues that GB and the EU are still operating essentially the same legal and scientific approvals system, just in different contexts. So the immediate risk here is not a sudden new discovery about safety. It is a policy choice about how quickly to treat past divergence as if it never happened.

The Bit Consumers Miss, Which Is The Bit That Matters

A lot of everyday supermarket food is built on arable crops. Not just bread and pasta and breakfast cereals, but biscuits, cakes, beer, and the ingredients that sit quietly inside ready meals. Arable crops also supply animal feed, which means they sit underneath meat and dairy too. So when people talk about food security, it is not only about whether we can grow carrots.

It is about whether we can keep producing the basic building blocks of the modern diet without lurching into more imports and more volatility. And it is about what kind of food system we end up with when the pressure rises.

If you want the blunt version of what I think this means for standards, imports, and small farms, that is below.

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