Regen is moving from concept to commercial reality across the UK sector, as growers and suppliers view soil health as key to resilience and long-term sustainability
While approaches may differ, the principles of regenerative agriculture, including improving soil health, reducing cultivation and enhancing biodiversity, are central to the future of horticultural production, a panel of experts at June’s Festival of Fresh conference in Cambridgeshire agreed.
For vegetable grower G’s, regenerative agriculture has become embedded throughout the business, according to the company’s Julius Joel.
“We’ve embraced the principles of regen across the board, working on the ethos that the system only works when the whole system’s working,” he explained. “We’ve invested in bringing that into play, with cover crops, reduced cultivation, all expressed gradually over time. Lots of research and learning is going into supporting our progress.”
The business is also trialling additional measures designed to accelerate improvements in soil biology and crop performance. “There are a couple of accelerators to the process,” said Joel. “One is an enhanced nutrition programme where we’re trying to build plant resistance to pests and disease and optimise growth. The second accelerator we’ve used is a composting process called Johnson-Su, which we’re using to re-inoculate our soils, to recreate our soil food webs and move away from the bacterial dominance that 50 years of hard farming has created.”
Joel believes the commercial case is becoming equally compelling as growers look to reduce exposure to volatile input costs. “We’re buying less fertiliser, we’re buying less diesel,” he said. “That’s significant in terms of protecting us against inflationary effects.”
The response from retailers has also become increasingly positive as the industry focuses on building resilience. “Some of our customers have got fantastic, large and well-informed teams on sustainability, but they’re all interested in resilience,” he said. “Our activity is well matched by the interest we’re seeing from retail customers. They’re enthusiastic and positive about all aspects of sustainability and resilience.”
For organic vegetable box company Riverford, regenerative agriculture presents a different challenge, with many of the core principles already standard practice within organic farming.
“Essentially, we only really have a two-pronged approach available to us,” said the company’s Harriet Bell. “One is to reduce our cultivation levels. So we’re changing our weed management, moving away from mechanical weeding and focusing much more on laser or light-based weeding – that’s happening across a few of our suppliers.
“The second is to look at what’s available in terms of perennial horticulture, and there is a vast number of perennial vegetables that are utterly underutilised by us as an industry.”
Reducing cultivation remains one of the biggest technical challenges facing organic horticulture, she acknowledged, but one that cannot be ignored.
“It is a massive technical challenge to reduce the level of cultivation in organic horticulture, but it’s an imperative one for the sake of soil health,” she said.
“Farming is a long-term game, so we should be thinking now about how we look after our soil today in a way that’s going to save our ass in 20 years’ time.”
She also cautioned against allowing discussions around regenerative production to distract from wider public health messaging around fresh produce consumption.
“I think there is a risk that if we focus on nutrient density of different crops produced in different ways, then we dilute the message that is in our collective interest to get across, which is that people need to eat more fruit and veg – period,” she stated.
“Let’s not get too fussed about whether this is slightly higher in zinc or slightly lower in zinc because of the way it’s grown. Just eat more of it.”
Foodservice supplier Fresh Direct is taking a collaborative approach by working directly with growers to support practical regenerative projects on farm.
“We and our customers were really interested in the whole area around regen,” said the company’s James Armitage. “We’ve worked with three of our grower partners and supported them with time, money and effort to engage in some specific regenerative agriculture principles.”
Projects have included tree planting with a Lancashire salad grower, establishing 350 metres of hedgerow and wildflower meadows with Barfoots in the West Country, and creating a reservoir on flood-prone land at a Nottinghamshire carrot farm to improve water retention while boosting wildlife habitat.
“We’re building relationships with these growers,” he stressed, “and we’re looking at longer term projects, which lock us in with those growers for a sustained period of time.”
