In the first week of July, consultants from Eunomia’s natural economy team attended Groundswell 2025, the annual regenerative agriculture festival, to expand their knowledge of the movement and meet farmers who are putting its concepts into practice.
Consultants David Kesner, Rhiannon Lee, Laura Stone, and Isabelle Williamson spent two sunny, exciting days at Lannock Manor Farm in Hertfordshire, listening to talks and panel discussions and speaking to food producers, conservation experts, and farmers. They came away buzzing with some key takeaways.
1. Regenerative farming for food resilience: Discussion focused on how regenerative agriculture can make our food system more resilient to climatic and geopolitical shocks as well as the demands of bureaucracy. Farmers seeking to practice it face various challenges: changing weather patterns that threaten yields; shortages of land close to their own communities; centralised supply chains that only serve large processors and vendors; and cultural values around food that prioritise convenience and affordability over quality. Solutions could lie in connecting more communities to local growers, so that farmers build their own customer relationships and grow demand for their produce.
2. Reshaping supply chains for a regenerative future: Most supply chains are currently configured on an industrial scale to channel farming produce to centralised processors who then distribute it to supermarkets and other vendors. Creating more food hubs that foster regional supply networks could create stronger connections between consumers and producers. Better storytelling could also inform consumers, teach them to recognise the links between how food tastes and its nutritional quality, and encourage behaviour change around consumption.
3. Improving food quality for better health: By feeding the country well, farmers have a key role to play in addressing our health crisis. Over the last 50 years, farming practices that prioritise quantity over quality have degraded soil health, introduced more chemicals, and generally made food less nourishing than it should be. The result: we are over-fed but under-nourished. To address this, nutrition (and its foundation, soil health) should become the top priority in food production. Linking food quality to health should drive decision-making and lead to better standards for measuring the nutritional properties of our food.
Groundswell 2025 highlighted some clear ways forward for the movement:
- The business case for regenerative farming and the ecosystem services it delivers, such as carbon sequestration and improved water quality, is now clear. Both the private and public sector are responding to this through investments like subsidising regen agricultural practices and equipment, and policy decisions.
- Policy making needs more engagement and input from farmers – along with the citizens they feed – to ensure it works well for those it will impact most.
- Peer-to-peer learning between farmers – facilitated by organisations like the Nature Friendly Farming Network – is critical to sharing knowledge and consolidating progress.
Our natural economy team will be feeding all they learned into our work for clients, and they’re already looking forward to Groundswell 2026.
