Joining forces brings environment rewards for farmer groups

Neighbouring or like-minded farmers working together to protect nature and deliver for the environment are achieving more through their collective actions. 

From community interest companies and cluster groups, to farmer co-operatives and collectives, there’s a wide range of structures and options.

There is recognition that significant change will come from large-scale adoption of measures and initiatives, many of them bringing financial benefits.

See also: Collaborative options available to help arable farmers

There are also competitive schemes such as Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENS), where corporate and often global business are rewarding farmers with cash for delivering ecosystem services.

For those who want to take it a stage further and access payments for nature recovery, clean water and carbon, rewards are possible from environmental improvement on a landscape scale – with several ways of achieving the best outcomes.

Environmental Farmers Group (EFG)

The Environmental Farmers Group is a farmer-owned, farmer-led co-operative, producing natural capital goods and a positive environmental impact on a landscape scale.

It was co-developed and founded by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which provides a convening role, scientific advice and advisory support.

Its mission is to harness scale and member co-operation to secure the best environmental results and financial returns for a wide range of goods and services.

EFG members can provide services including:

• BNG units
• NN phosphate credits
• NN nitrate credits
• Voluntary carbon credits
• Voluntary biodiversity or nature credits
• Bespoke ecosystem services.

Already the EFG has 156 members, covering 67,000ha. A further 297 farmers have registered expressions of interest, potentially bringing in another 187,000ha.

Co-operative approach

Standing together is important, believes Dr Johnny Wake of Courteenhall Farms, who chairs the central England region of the Environmental Farmers Group (EFG), which was formed earlier this year.

The largest of the five EFG regions, it includes river catchments in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, giving it considerable scale and the potential to cover 710,000ha.

The new group will be able to take advantage of the work that the wider EFG has already done in developing expertise and its understanding of emerging natural capital markets, he says, which catchment-scale projects are suitable for.

Already, almost 3% of England’s farmed area is covered by EFG. “By co-operating in this way, it allows us to deliver environmental improvements in a bigger, better and more joined-up way, and be rewarded fairly for doing so,” he says.

“The alternative is that we all operate in isolation offering ad-hoc services and run the risk of being exploited or ignored.”

He believes there are huge opportunity for groups of farmers working on a landscape scale, as the existing EFG cells have already shown.

“Collectively, farmers have more bargaining power, through the connectivity of landscapes and the ability to pool their resources.

“It also means that they can work with whatever else is going on in the area, which is often more appealing to potential buyers.”

Although much of the focus has been on biodiversity net gain (BNG) and carbon credits to date, there are opportunities in nutrient neutrality (mitigating the effects of phosphate and nitrogen on sensitive catchments), as well as environmental, social and governance units, and Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures reporting.

“It’s early days with some of these, but they could be the big wins. There are already six different services that the EFG can provide,” says Johnny.

Sharing knowledge and intelligence is a further benefit to farmer members, as it simplifies the process of identifying the best providers and the integrity of their offers.

“If you want to be in this game, you must have the legalities, scale and credibility that these markets require. EFG has got all these covered and is already a trusted trading partner.”

Membership helps individual farmers and landowners keep abreast of developing opportunities in these complex emerging natural capital markets, he says.

EFG acts as a co-operative, with farmers joining and paying a fee of £1.25/ha.

When a natural capital deal is struck, 88% of the value of the trade goes back to the farmer on whose land the trade is based, 9% is shared equally among other farmers in the group, and 3% goes back to the central function.

Once they’ve joined, members can only trade through EFG.

As Digby Sowerby of Natural Capital Advisory, the executive function of the EFG, explains, there have been two EFG trades completed to date, with a further dozen opportunities in the trading pipeline, which are expected to come to fruition soon.

“At the moment, these trades are mainly for nutrient neutrality credits in southern England, alongside a few BNG enquiries,” he says.

After much scrutiny of soil carbon providers, a soil carbon offer will be available to members soon. “For this one, scale is critical with buyers looking to purchase in excess of 100,000t carbon dioxide equivalent a year.”

Setting up

Recruiting members to EFG has been done largely through word of mouth and existing contacts, says Colin Smart, who was given the task of helping farmers understand what the natural capital opportunity looks like.

“When EFG started in 2022, these markets were in their infancy,” he says.

“There was recognition that it was a complex subject, and that some of the developments were fast-moving, so it was important for farmers to have a trusted navigator.”

For that reason, the door was already half open when he started to contact potential members.

Many of them were involved in nine different cluster groups in the South and South West, so were used to working together and understood the value of collective action.

“The fact that EFG is owned by farmers and run for their benefit was really important to them, as was the fact that EFG is a not-for-profit organisation.”

Good communication with members has been essential and will remain so as the group continues to expand, adds Colin.

“Being the ‘eyes and ears’ on ecoservices opportunities puts the onus on us to keep members informed.”

As a result, newsletters, quarterly meetings and constant updates are issued.

The recent change of government is a good example – members needed to understand what it was likely to mean to them.

Growth of the group has been good, he reports.

“One learning for everyone involved is that the new regulated offerings that are coming though are all based around planning. So it’s a very slow process, and we’ve had to accept that.”

His final point is that buyers of ecoservices are increasingly looking for one place to buy the credits that they need, which is a great opportunity for farming.

“A large housebuilder or developer knows that it only has to deal with EFG to get its requirement. Not surprisingly, they see that as a plus.”

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Green Farm Collective

Four leading farmers are behind a group focused on regenerative practices which nurture the soil and nature, so providing a nature and carbon investment opportunity.

The Green Farm Collective encourages like-minded farmers to come together to achieve net zero, improve farmland biodiversity and earn an additional income stream.

The group works in partnership with Trinity Agtech to record carbon, natural capital and the impact of farming practices, with any trading done via Trinity Natural Capital Markets.

An active farmer member, of which there are about 40, pays £250/year to be part of the collective.

To join, they must be operating a net-zero business, have certified credentials of their farm’s natural capital and policies on plant health, biodiversity and water management.

The collective has developed its own regenerative wheat standard which commands a premium of £20/t over the price paid by local milling plants, with the first loads of wheat going out this summer to be milled for use in regenerative dough for pizzas.

The standard allows half the herbicide and fungicide use of traditional farming methods and no plant growth regulators. In addition, a maximum of 180kg/ha of nitrogen can be used, for a grain protein of 11.5%.

“This is wheat that has been grown to our agreed standard and audited by Food Integrity Assurance,” says founder member Jake Freestone. “It means that food grown in a regenerative way is ending up on our plates.”

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LENS

Farmers who want to provide ecosystem services to supply chain partners who have a wider interest than a single commodity could be tempted by an offer from Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENS), if they farm in a relevant area.

Driven by net zero, LENS is a network of those seeking outcomes from the farmed environment, such as Nestle, Pepsico, British Sugar and water companies.

It works by rewarding farmers that implement nature-based solutions, delivering the required outcomes in a given area.

In the UK, LENS has multiple trade areas – including East Anglia, Yorkshire and Cumbria – while further afield, it operates in Poland, Hungary and Italy.

It brokers negotiations and eventually transactions between buyers and farmers who deliver them on the ground.

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Cluster groups

Originally developed by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust in 2012, farmer cluster groups continue to be a popular way of delivering environmental projects, with farmers coming together voluntarily for the benefit of soil, water and wildlife.

Operating independently to other initiatives, they work to expand and connect valuable habitats as well as recover important species.

Many have applied for support from the Natural England Facilitation Fund, while others have been set up with private sources of finance.

The opportunity to form a farmer cluster group based on the river Ray in South Oxfordshire was seized by Chloe Timberlake in 2022, who was working for Natural England at the time.

Having spent considerable time and effort targeting individual farmers, Chloe had identified a gap for like-minded individuals to pool their efforts and make a difference with joined-up habitats on a larger scale.

As a result, she decided to see what support there would be for a cluster. “I was very pleasantly surprised by the turnout for the first meeting, which took place in a pub in November 2022,” she recalls.

“There were 40 or so people in the room, most of who had heard about it by word of mouth.

“We didn’t use any particular recruitment tactics – I think the timing was right and there was plenty of goodwill to get things going.”

Now, with just over 30 farmer members covering 15,000ha, the cluster has been successful at securing funding and Chloe, who has since joined Ceres Rural as a farming consultant, has been appointed its facilitator.

Having secured some initial funding to cover meeting costs, she was also able to get some early financial support from Natural England, which covered the costs of supplementary feeding of farmland birds on 28 local farms.

“It was a good start,” she adds. “Almost immediately, farmers could see a benefit of being part of the group.”

The group has continued support from the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, which has provided up to £120,000 of funding, which is earmarked for bird surveys and whole farm plans.

The cluster group is working with the Trust’s Reconnecting Bernwood, Otmoor and the Ray initiative, which aims to restore nature and support rural communities through better-connected habitats and wildlife corridors.

An ecologically rich area of 300sq km, it is a landscape of fragmented habitats and rare species, including ancient woodland, species-rich grassland and floodplain meadows, situated between the towns of Buckingham, Bicester, Aylesbury and Oxford.

There is also an RSPB reserve at Otmoor of wet meadow habitat, which the cluster also liaises with, so that wet grassland species are encouraged where appropriate.

“It’s really important to work with others and take a partnership approach, so that we get the best results,” says Chloe.

“If farmers know what wildlife they have on their farms and how to look after it, our experience is that they want to do that.”   

The cluster has a steering group, to ensure it remains farmer-led.

Stakeholder events have been held and priorities agreed, so that all the members are working towards the same outcomes, and the group remains open to new members.

A three-year Facilitation Fund agreement through Countryside Stewardship started in June 2024 and will run for the next three years, covering the costs of running meetings and organising speakers.

Other sources of funding are being actively pursued, from both the private and public purse.

“So far, the money has been used for information sharing, holding meetings and getting started. We’ve seen that if we hold a good event, people do change their practices as a result of attending,” says Chloe.

“Now we want to use funding to do things on the ground. We’re working towards every member having a whole farm plan, which looks at what they’ve already got on the farm and how that can be developed.”