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.

AgStackers Directory

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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…

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a month 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…

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3 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…

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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…

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6 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.🐑…

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2 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…

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3 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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2 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…

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2 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

3 months ago · 4 likes · Abey Rae Scaglione

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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.

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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?

Leave a comment

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If you are a paid subscriber, thank you. You keep this work independent, and you make it possible for me to keep writing with nuance instead of chasing clicks.

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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

2 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…

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2 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…

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10 months 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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3 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…

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3 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…

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2 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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3 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…

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2 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

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2 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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2 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…

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4 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…

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2 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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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,

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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 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:

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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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3 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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7 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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4 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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3 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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3 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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3 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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3 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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3 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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3 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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3 months ago · 26 likes · 13 comments · Cattle Culture

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

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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.

Read more

I was half way through a Guardian piece about Riverford when I felt that familiar mix of hope and suspicion, because the headline story is both encouraging and bleak at the same time. Sales are up, operating profits are down, and even a business built on organic is still absorbing costs to keep customers on side, which makes you wonder what organic is really worth in a moment when farming feels less able to carry extra risk.

When I was farming pigs, I learned quickly that labels do not keep the rain off your back, and they do not pay your feed bill when the sums stop adding up. Most farmers are not looking for a lifestyle badge, they are looking for a way to keep going, and that is why I keep coming back to organic, not as moral high ground, but as one of the few words in British farming that still has a defined meaning and a public story attached to it.

So I want to look at why organic appears to be working particularly well in veg and dairy right now, why that matters as regenerative gets diluted by corporate marketing, and what I think the real question is. Not whether organic is good, but who can actually afford to get there.

So What Do We Mean By Organic

Organic is one of those words that gets used as shorthand for all sorts of hopes and frustrations, so it helps to be clear about what we mean when we say it. In practical terms it is a defined standard backed by inspections and rules, it limits synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, it sets requirements around animal welfare and feed, and it forces a level of record keeping that can feel relentless when you are already stretched.

It is not perfect, and it does not automatically mean low carbon, or local, or fair, or small scale. But it is harder to stretch into meaninglessness than regenerative has become, and that is the part that has my attention, because regenerative is now in corporate sustainability reports and marketing campaigns that promise soil health and nature recovery without ever saying what has changed on the ground.

I do not dismiss regenerative farming, because I have seen regenerative ideas make real differences on real farms. I say it because when a word becomes a brand asset it starts to lose its edges, and if regenerative can mean anything it stops protecting the farmers who are taking the risk and doing the hard work, whereas organic, for all its flaws, still has teeth, and in a market where trust is everything, that matters.

Why I Keep Coming Back To This

I should say up front that I am no expert in the dairy or veg sector, because I spent my farming life in meat and pigs. I am looking at these two because they are where the clearest signals are right now, and because they expose the same question underneath, which is who gets to hold onto value in a system built to squeeze.

A Quick Note From Pigs

Before I get too far into veg and dairy, I want to explain where I am coming from. On our pig farm, organic was the highest standard in my mind, and we were not certified, but we practised to organic standards as our baseline and tried to do better where we could, which meant homegrown cereals turned into pig feed, no routine antibiotics, no mutilations, ample grazing space, and rotating land to prevent poaching.

We would have liked to go organic, but for a new business the certification costs were too high, and there was no clear subsidy available to help us make the jump while we were still finding our feet, which is one reason I get prickly when organic is talked about like a simple choice. Sometimes it is not a values problem, it is a cashflow problem.

I also saw what the organic label can do for small farmers. At Hampshire Farmers’ Market there was another small meat producer selling organic certified beef, lamb, and pork, and it was noticeable that when they were there, the other meat producers did not do as well, because consumers were naturally drawn to the word organic, not because they had read the standards, but because it felt like something they could trust.

Veg Is Where The Numbers Are Clearest

The clearest public example of organic working as a business model is still veg, especially when it is tied to direct to consumer sales, because people can picture what they are buying and they can feel the difference in their weekly shop. A box of vegetables arriving at your door is dinner, and it is also a relationship with a supplier that sits outside the usual supermarket fog.

Recent reporting on Riverford is interesting for that reason. Riverford reported a 6% sales increase to £117m in the year to May 2025, it delivers about 70,000 boxes a week, and Rob Haward, Riverford’s chief executive, described the moment as something the sector has not seen for a long time, saying:

“We haven’t seen the market grow as much as this for 20 years.”

He linked that growth to what he called “increased concerns about where you can go to get food you can trust”.

But the Riverford story is also useful because it refuses to pretend organic is a magic wand. Operating profits fell, and Haward said the company had absorbed some rising costs rather than passing them on, while prices rose by about 3% in the financial year as Riverford and its suppliers battled higher wages, energy costs, and the pressure of Brexit linked paperwork.

So yes, organic can sell, but it does not make you immune to the wider weather, and it leaves a question hanging that matters for the rest of farming. How much of this is replicable without Riverford’s scale, logistics, and decades of brand building, and what happens to the organic premium when household budgets tighten.

Dairy Is Where It Gets Brutal

If veg shows the commercial power of a clear offer, dairy shows the stakes, because the Guardian profile of Mossgiel Organic Farm in Scotland is one of those case studies that makes your stomach drop, simply because it is so recognisable.

“The same month my father died, the milk price collapsed from 27p for every litre we sold to 9p, which resulted in a loss of £100,000 over my first 6-12 months of farming,” Bryce Cunningham said. “With huge debt and no way to repay it, our choices were to sell everything we could and stop farming, effectively just go bankrupt, or try something different.”

Cunningham decided on the latter, reducing the milking herd and shifting from supplying supermarkets to organic milk production and direct sales, and today Mossgiel Organic Farm employs more than 40 people and processes about 1.5m litres of organic milk a year.

It is also a reminder that this kind of shift takes infrastructure beyond the farm gate, because it takes processing, packaging, energy, brand, and the time and money to build those pieces without collapsing under the day to day realities of farming, which brings you back to the same uncomfortable question as veg. How many farms could do this even if they wanted to, and what would it take to make it possible for more than a handful.

The Bit We Skip Over

This is where the organic conversation often becomes frustrating, because going organic is expensive and the cost lands hardest on small farms, and it is not one cost, it is a pile of them. It is certification fees, inspections, paperwork, the transition period, and the risk of changing systems before you see a return, and it is also the reality that during conversion you can be doing much of the work without yet being paid the premium.

All of that takes time and cashflow that many people simply do not have, and I have seen first hand how quickly a good idea becomes impossible when you are already running on fumes. Plenty of small farms are farming in ways that look and feel organic in practice, but cannot justify the formal badge, and if organic becomes something only the well resourced can afford, it risks turning into a premium label rather than a pathway to better farming and a healthier countryside.

What The Research Says

’s Nuffield Scholarship report, What is the future for organic dairy, makes a point that feels obvious once you say it out loud, which is that organic works best when the wider system supports it, meaning processing capacity, strong cooperative models, branding and storytelling that makes the values visible to consumers, and policy stability.

Without those, organic can be financially fragile, especially when consumer spending tightens, and that does not make organic a bad idea, it makes it a systems question.

So Can Organic Actually Help?

I think it could save some farms, and I think it already is, because it is helping some businesses hold onto value, it is giving some farmers a clearer story, it is offering a standard that is harder to hijack than regenerative, and it is often linked to better welfare and lower chemical use.

And if it genuinely helps farmers earn a fairer price, then it is not just a lifestyle choice, it is a survival strategy.

But if the pathway stays expensive and admin heavy, it will remain skewed towards farms with spare capacity, and that means the farms that most need a lifeline will be the least able to reach it.

I am very aware that it is easy to talk about organic as an idea, and much harder to live it as a business decision, especially when you are already stretched and you do not have spare time or spare cash to experiment. If you have ever run the numbers, started the process, walked away from it, or made it work, I would love to hear what you learned, and what you wish the rest of us understood.

If you are not subscribed yet, you can join for free to get the next post in your inbox, because I am planning a follow up on what would make organic more accessible to British farmers, especially smaller farms and tenant farmers. And if you are able to go paid, that is what funds the time it takes to keep doing this properly, reading the reports, chasing the numbers, and turning it into something useful rather than just hot takes.

Subscribe now

Either way, if you have lived experience here, please add your voice in the comments. I will read everything, and I may pull together the follow up around what you tell me, alongside the policy and market pieces that shape what is possible.

Leave a comment

Sources

• The Guardian, “Riverford sales rise 6% as UK organics market enjoys biggest boom in two decades” (3 Feb 2026): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/03/riverford-sales-rise-organics-market-boom

• The Guardian, “It was go bankrupt or try something different – how one Scottish farmer is rewriting the rules of dairy farming” (23 Dec 2025): https://www.theguardian.com/scotland-for-the-head-heart-and-the-spirit/2025/dec/23/how-a-scottish-farmer-is-reinventing-dairy-farming

• Sophie Gregory, Nuffield Scholarship report, What is the future for organic dairy (2025): https://www.nuffieldscholar.org/reports/gb/2025/what-future-organic-dairy

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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,

Thank you for being here. Your paid support keeps this work going, but it also makes it feel worth doing, because it turns writing into a conversation instead of a broadcast. I read every reply and I carry your questions with me as I decide what to dig into next.

The main things to know this month are the AgStacker Community Newsletter and …

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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.

This month I’m also really excited to share something new for the AgStacker community: The AgStacker Roundtable.

Starting in February, the Roundtable will be a monthly live discussion on Substack for paid subscribers, built for proper conversation, the kind that’s hard to have in comments. I’m hoping it becomes a place where we can share what we’re seeing, swap useful tips and tricks, and, where it makes sense, help each other promote our work or even spark collaborations.

It’ll run on the first Sunday after AgStacker, at 1pm UK time (8am US Eastern), and I’ll always share a recap afterwards for anyone who can’t make it live.

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. Sally brings that rare mix of real world experience and deep care for the details, the kind of voice that makes you feel both more grounded and more capable. She’s thoughtful, practical, and quietly radical in the way she keeps coming back to what actually works on the land and in the garden.

Sally has worked with organisations like the Soil Association, which gives her a valuable inside view of how food and farming systems are shaped, and where the gaps still are. What I love most is how she translates all that into something usable for the rest of us, especially around regenerative gardening and small-scale food production. Her writing is full of the kind of hard won clarity that helps you grow better food, and think better about what growing is really for.

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

Sally connects the dots between what we spray on fields, what we spray in gardens, and even what we put on our pets, and it’s hard to unsee once you’ve read it. This is a clear, evidence-led piece that asks a simple question, why are we still normalising chemicals that ripple through soil life, pollinators, and the birds right outside our windows.

“Chaired by Helen Browning of the Soil Association, the ORFC debate kicked off with Michael Antoniou, Professor of Molecular Genetics at Kings College, London who said glyphosate was deceptively toxic and the only safe dose was zero.”

Climate Change Garden

Why are we still using chemicals in our gardens and on our pets?

🌱 Welcome! I’m Sally Morgan, an organic gardener and botanist who loves to experiment. Here you can read about matters relating to climate change, regenerative organic gardening, growing veg and biodiversity, all helping you become a…

Read more

4 months ago · 22 likes · 9 comments · Sally Morgan

This is a gorgeous little autumn wander that turns into a genuinely useful mini guide. Sally shows you how to “read” a hedgerow by its fruits and colour, then walks through a simple way to estimate its age, with just your pacing and a species count.

“Basically, you pace out a 30 yard stretch of hedge and count the number of native tree and shrub species in that stretch and then repeat this a number of times along different lengths of the hedge to get an average.”

Climate Change Garden

Hedgerow abundance

🌱 I’m Sally Morgan, an organic gardener and botanist who loves to experiment…

Read more

7 months ago · 30 likes · 8 comments · Sally Morgan

If you’ve been side-eyeing the word “regenerative” in farming, Sally does the useful thing and brings it back to first principles, then shows how it translates to a garden. This is a practical, hopeful guide to moving beyond “less harm” and towards soil, water, and biodiversity that actually improve because you’re there.

“I think it means a shift in mindset, from simply maintaining a garden to actively restoring and enhancing the health of the soil, ecosystem, and climate.”

Climate Change Garden

Gardening: forget sustainable and go regenerative

🌱 I'm Sally Morgan, an organic gardener and botanist who loves to experiment. Here you can read about matters relating to climate change, regenerative organic gardening, growing veg and biodiversity, all helping you become a…

Read more

9 months ago · 38 likes · Sally Morgan

From the Community:

Laverne captures that moment every grower knows, when you realise you’re back on the annual treadmill again. This is a practical, encouraging case for edible perennials that actually feed you, not just “nice” landscaping, and it’ll have you eyeing your garden like a long term investment.

“I want a garden that’s less work, but still produces legitimate amounts of food for my family.”

Your Garden Coach

Why I'm switching my focus from annual vegetables to edible perennials this year

It all hit me like a light bulb of wisdom to a foolish brain…

Read more

4 months ago · 22 likes · 19 comments · Laverne

Emily’s flour field trip is the best kind of food writing, part memory, part economics, part proper craft lesson. You’ll come away understanding why organic bread flour behaves differently, and why knowing your miller matters more than ever.

“This year I want to focus on making food for people I know with ingredients from people I have a relationship with.”

Moments through food

Flour Power

This week I took myself off on a field trip to visit my local grower and miller, Angus from Mungoswells in East Lothian, Scotland. This also happens to be the countryside that I grew up in. Summers spent clambering over hay bales, running through stubble fields, shredding the delicate skin on my little legs, desperately escaping the monstrous combine ha…

Read more

4 months ago · 8 likes · 9 comments · Emily Cuddeford

Adam takes apart the “$3 healthy meal” claim for what it really is, a spreadsheet answer to a lived reality. This is a sharp, humane read on why affordability is not accessible, and why food policy keeps failing the people it’s meant to serve.

“The simple fact is that affordability on paper means nothing if it can’t be practiced in real life.”

Growing is HALF the Battle!

A Healthy Meal Is Only $3?

Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed Americans can eat healthily for $3 a meal…

Read more

4 months ago · 7 likes · Adam Cohen

Julie turns a very real smallholding headache into a useful lesson fast. If you’ve ever had mysterious missing eggs, this is the practical, slightly brutal read you want, and it lands on a bigger truth about fixing the problem behind the problem.

“It’s like that with so many things in life.

There’s the problem. And there’s the problem behind the problem.

Until you address them both, you still have a problem.”

JustFarmerJulie

2 mistakes that cost me dozens of eggs

We have chickens. Right now they are my project and I really enjoy them…

Read more

4 months ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · JustFarmerJulie

Matteo reads the Ozempic headlines and answers with a full-throated rallying cry for real food. It’s fiery, funny, and oddly energising, a reminder that the natural food movement is about freedom, not perfection.

“I believe that the imprisonment which industrial food places over our health, our environment and our communities, means that the movement for natural food is one of greatest freedom struggles of our time.”

Nature's Food Movement

VIVA LA REVOLUCIÒN

Dear Friends…

Read more

4 months ago · 27 likes · 3 comments · Higher Farm

Steph writes the most honest version of “eat local” I’ve read in a while, practical, imperfect, and grounded in real budgets and real fatigue. If you’ve ever felt guilty for buying oranges or supermarket bread, this is the permission slip you didn’t know you needed.

“Local, for me, is a patchwork.

What local does not look like is consistency. It shifts week to week, month to month.”

Steph's Substack

What ‘Local’ Actually Looks Like

Where I live, “local” is not a postcard. It’s not a linen bag of vegetables balanced on a vintage bicycle, or a Saturday morning spent drifting between stalls with a flat white in hand. It is messier than that. More provisional. Shaped by time, money, weather, and fatigue…

Read more

4 months ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Steph Goodson

Carrie explains Biodiversity Net Gain without the jargon, and then shows how quickly it’s being hollowed out in the name of “growth”. It’s a clear, slightly furious read about why nature is an easy scapegoat, and why building homes and protecting habitats should never have been framed as a trade-off.

“If development takes from nature, development should help put something back.”

The Nature of Things

The Promise of Biodiversity Net Gain

Biodiversity Net Gain or BNG, for those of us who spend our lives acronyms-deep, is not a grand rewilding vision or a utopian promise…

Read more

4 months ago · 30 likes · 18 comments · Carrie Starbuck

Jackie’s January catch up is part seed clear-out, part gentle wrestle with “analogue” as a trend, and part ORFC debrief with the sessions that actually felt useful. It’s a warm, honest read about staying grounded while still letting yourself be inspired.

“It has always had the ability to over-inspire, and cause me to dream up extravagant futures which really aren’t mine.”

Smallholder Journal

Seeds, Trends, Conference Friends

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4 months ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · Jackie Bridgen

This is a calm, bracing reminder that “simple” is not the same as “easy”, and that convenience often just hides the work somewhere else. If you’ve ever felt the mental load of modern life but couldn’t quite name it, this will land.

“Simplicity is not a lifestyle aesthetic. It is a commitment to carry the weight of what sustains a life, whatever form that may take.”

Seasons of a Simple Life

Simple Does Not Mean Easy

I recently watched a video of a farm family living what they called a “simple life.” The images themselves were unremarkable in the best possible way. Animals being cared for. Meals prepared at home. Children playing outside. Gardens being nurtured. A life shaped by seasons and daylight rather than convenience and speed. But the comments beneath the vid…

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4 months ago · 47 likes · 19 comments · Seasons of a Simple Life

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I watched Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) 2026 online this year. I am grateful it exists in this format because it meant I could still be part of the conversation, even with family life, time zones, and the reality that comes with that.

But I want to be honest about what I missed, because it matters.

The biggest thing I did not get from attending online this year was the inspiration.

There is a real lift that comes from being at ORFC in person. You leave with that slightly fizzing feeling that better farming is possible, and that you are not trying to figure it all out on your own. I missed that buzz this time.

If you are a farmer, thinking about farming, or brand new to the industry, I would genuinely recommend going in person if you can. It is full of good ideas, good people, hard hitting topics, and proper farm case studies, not just theory.

If you cannot make it, the online version is still excellent. But next year I am not missing it in person. And who knows, maybe I will dig deep and apply to be a speaker. Watch this space!

Andy Dibben opened the conference with a remark that I have not been able to shake. It set the tone, and it also explained why ORFC matters to so many people.

“In the 12 months since we last gathered here, we’ve experienced the sunniest and warmest year since UK records began. Global politics continues to fragment and become more volatile. Fascism, open corruption, and oppression seem to be on the rise. Destruction of natural ecosystems accelerates despite the increase in the in awareness of its importance.

One thing is clear. To address these challenges, we cannot rely on our political leaders. The change will come from the bottom up. We, the people, need to build a new society and leave the billionaires to wither on the vine in their high castles.

Without us, the people, they will become irrelevant.”

I do not share this to be dramatic. I share it because it captures the mood I usually feel in the room at ORFC, and it is exactly the thing I missed by not being there in person.

ORFC vs OFC

There are two big conferences in Oxford, UK every January.

There is the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC), where DEFRA (The Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) made new announcements about the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) subsidy reopening this year. A report summary is coming soon because I want to read the details properly. Often when the government says one thing, they mean another. You have to read between the lines and see what it actually means for farmers, not spreadsheet thinkers.

Then there is the Oxford Real Farming Conference, an agroecology focused conference with well over 150 sessions. ORFC has always been the place to share progressive ideas. Subjects include agroecology, regenerative agriculture, organic farming and indigenous food and farming systems.

They are very different conferences. Sometimes they feel like polar opposites to me. But what I think we need most is a bridge between the two.

Farming is not one size fits all. All farmers are feeling the pain of our broken food system, but we cannot keep designing policy changes that only support one kind of farming while expecting everyone else to adapt.

That is also why I welcomed seeing the EFRA Committee Q&A at ORFC this year. It felt like a small but important step towards having harder conversations in the same room.

My top sessions from the online programme

I missed plenty, and I know I will have missed some of the biggest conversations happening in corridors and side rooms. I did not get to sit in on new abattoir solutions, meet up properly with the emergent generation, catch up with food writers I admire, or even pop down to the Oxford Farming Conference, which I was invited to at the last minute.

Still, these are the sessions that stayed with me:

Soil to Pub

This one surprised me. I jumped in last minute and ended up loving it, partly because it got practical about what makes farmer and hospitality relationships actually work. It was a reminder that the route to market is not just logistics, it is trust, communication, and shared values.

Watch it here:

Resistance And Renewal: A Debate On Glyphosate

This was one of those sessions that makes you sit up straighter. It was a proper debate, not a slogan contest.

One uncomfortable point that stayed with me was this. If we ban glyphosate, another pesticide will be released with two molecules different, with less testing, fewer trials, and potentially worse impacts. So if we are going to call for bans, we need to be honest about what we are actually asking for. It cannot just be one chemical. It has to be the whole pesticide system.

Watch it here:

EFRA Committee Q&A

This was one of the most useful sessions I watched because the value was in the audience questions, not the panel s opening remarks.

The animal welfare section was the bit I paid closest attention to because of the newly released Animal Welfare Strategy. They sounded genuinely relieved the strategy is finally out, but they were also blunt that the timescales and delivery are the real test, and that DEFRA’s capacity and parliamentary time will decide what actually makes it onto the statute book.

It was a good reminder that published is not the same thing as done. I have scepticism about DEFRA delivering the Animal Welfare Strategy, and this session added even more questions to my mind. A deeper dive is coming soon.

Watch it here:

The Demise of Plant-Based Foods

This one landed because it connects directly to the conversations that blew up after my Veganuary posts, especially the climate logic of flying produce around the world while calling it better.

A big thread here was the problem with a lot of modern plant based food being ultra processed, full of preservatives and synthetic ingredients, and marketed as a moral upgrade.

What I did agree with, strongly, was the push back towards real produce as the actual plant based alternative. Food grown in soil, eaten seasonally, and treated like food rather than a branded identity.

Where I felt a bit of friction was the default leap to therefore we must eat less meat. I do not think the answer is blanket meat reduction. I think it is less bad meat and more good meat.

Factory farming is catastrophic for animal welfare, human health, nature, and the wider environment. If we cannot support higher welfare meat because of the price point, then we should not be eating meat.

At the same time, I do understand the bridge that has to be built. We are not going to feed the whole country high welfare, organic, agroecology meat at the current rate of consumption without serious system change. So yes, I understand the argument that if you cannot afford better meat all the time, eat less, even if I am not willing to turn that into a moral instruction for everyone.

Watch it here:

Three Themes I Kept Hearing

Even through a laptop screen, a few threads kept repeating.

First, the gap between policy and reality. Strategies, roadmaps, and announcements matter, but delivery is where trust is won or lost.

Second, the food system is broken in ways that hurt everyone. Farmers, consumers, animals, and ecosystems are all paying the price for cheapness.

Third, there is a hunger for practical bridges. Bridges between farmers and chefs, between soil and public health, between agroecology and mainstream policy spaces, and between the two Oxford conferences.

If you have been reading for a while and my work has helped you think, feel, or argue more clearly about farming and food, the best thing you can do is comment on this post.

Tell me what you watched, what you disagreed with, and what you want me to unpack next.

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I’ve been to the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) in person before, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t sting a bit to be doing it from a laptop this year.

But needs must. I’m working abroad, work has been thinner than I would like lately, and I could not justify the cost of the flight this year. Supporting my family comes first.

The upside is this. ORFC has made it genuinely possible to take part online, and I’m going to be watching closely, partly because I miss it, partly because it’s one of the few places where the conversations feel like they’re actually about the future of farming, not just the optics, and partly because I want to turn what I learn into something useful for you.

Two quick things

First, if you’re a subscriber here, consider this your heads up. I’ll be sharing my ORFC reflections after the conference, what landed, what felt like fluff, what felt quietly important, and what I think it means for UK farming and food security.

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Second, you can still join ORFC online.

Register here https://orfc.org.uk/book-orfc-2026-tickets/

If you’re an online delegate outside of Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, you can join for free using the bursary option.

What you can watch online

I’m not going to reproduce the whole programme here, but I will add a screenshot of the online timetable below so you can see what’s available at a glance.

Read the programme and plan a few sessions in advance, because there are so many good ones, and if you are attending in person it matters even more since rooms fill up fast, although some of the best sessions are the ones you do not plan for and simply wander into.

The Substack Sessions

A quick, unofficial list of sessions featuring Substack writers, in case you want to prioritise a few.

Online

• Book Talk: Finding Lights In A Dark Age, Building Local Agrarianism - , Thu 8 Jan, 12.45PM to 13.30PM GMT

• Wild Service, Why Nature Needs You - , Thu 8 Jan, 18.00PM to 19.20PM GMT (This one lands at 2am for me in Malaysia, so I will be catching it on replay on YouTube.)

• Farmer Perspectives, Pathways to Healing People and Planet - , Fri 9 Jan, 09.00AM to 10.20AM GMT

In person

• Wholesalers’ Role In Progressive Agriculture - , Thu 8 Jan, 11.00AM to 12.20PM GMT, St Columba’s United Reformed Church, Hall

• Workshop: Older Landworkers, Beginning, Continuing, Handing On - , Thu 8 Jan, 16.00PM to 17.20PM GMT, St Columba’s United Reformed Church, Hall

• Growing A Love For Pulses In Schools - , Fri 9 Jan, 09.00AM to 10.20AM GMT, St Columba’s United Reformed Church, Hall

• Venison, Quality Meat With A Positive Impact - , Fri 9 Jan, 09.00AM to 10.20AM GMT, Town Hall, St Aldate’s Room

If you’re a Substack writer speaking at ORFC, or you know one I’ve missed, reply in the comments with your session title and time and I’ll add it.

What I’ll Be Watching and Why

This is my actual watchlist, the sessions I’m prioritising, and what I’m hoping to get from them.

Thursday

Opening Plenary, Assembly Room - I always start here. The opening plenary sets the tone, and it’s usually where you get the big reminder of why people keep turning up to ORFC, and last year I loved James Rebanks’ remarks about resilience, which felt like grounded optimism that doesn’t insult your intelligence.

Resistance and Renewal, a debate on glyphosate, Newman Room - I’m interested in chemical free farming anyway, and this feels like one of those sessions where you’ll get a proper clash of views rather than polite agreement. It’s chaired by Helen Browning, the Soil Association chief exec and a major organic producer in her own right, with Martin Lines from the Nature Friendly Farming Network on the panel, so I’m expecting it to be both practical and political.

The Magic of Trees for Livestock, Woodshed - I’m fascinated by agroforestry, and I want more than the headline benefits. Professor Jim McAdam has been running silvopasture trials since 1989, so I’m hoping for proper, down to earth detail, what actually works, what’s wishful thinking, and what the livestock welfare and parasite control benefits look like in real systems.

Updates From the Frontier of Soil Science, Assembly Room - I want to keep learning about soil health, and I’m curious about the point where tech and AI becomes genuinely useful on farm rather than just shiny. Josiah Judson from the Soil Association is speaking, and I am hoping this session gets into what these tools can actually do for decision making, not just what they can do in a lab or a demo.

Friday

A Q and A with the EFRA Committee, Digital Hub - This feels unmissable. With farming policy shifting, food security under genuine pressure, and family farms being squeezed from every direction, I want to hear what the EFRA Committee think their priorities are for 2026, and whether they sound like people who understand what’s happening on the ground.

The Demise of Plant Based Foods, Cause for Celebration or Concern, Woodshed - I’m really looking forward to this. Plant based, UPFs, Veganuary, industrial meat, it’s all tangled together, and the debate is often more tribal than thoughtful. Rob Percival is chairing, and I loved his session on UPFs last year, so I’m expecting this to be sharp and properly argued.

Farm Deep Dive, Diversification with Great Cotmarsh Farm, Assembly Room - I love a real case study, especially when it is about how small farms actually make money without losing the plot. Great Cotmarsh are doing organic and Pasture for Life certified meat, and they have built a whole diversification ecosystem around fibre, dyes, tanning and outreach, which is the kind of thing people talk about but rarely pull off, so I want to hear what is working and what is harder than it looks.

Perennial Protein, How UK Nut Farming Is Healing Land and Communities, Assembly Room - Agroforestry again, because I can’t help myself. I’m especially interested in the UK nut farming pioneers, including Andrew Kent from Glastonbury Nut Farm, and what the market actually looks like once you strip away the hype.

A Small Ask and a February Teaser

If you’ve found my writing useful this year, the reporting, the commentary, the occasional rant, the trying to make sense of it all, the simplest way to support it is to become a paid subscriber.

I’m keeping my ORFC reflections free for everyone because I want as many people as possible in the conversation. Paid subscribers are what make it possible for me to keep doing this work, especially when I’m writing around family life and a limited number of hours.

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In February I’m also starting something new for paid subscribers!

A monthly AgStacker Roundtable live discussion on Substack, plus a written Q & A thread that will stay open so you can add questions even if you cannot make the live session.

The first roundtable is planned for Sunday 15 February at 1pm UK time and 8am Eastern US.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can upgrade any time. If you’re already paid, thank you. You’re the reason I can keep showing up here, thank you!

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

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