This year’s festival was another brilliant two days of conversations, ideas, and connections across the regenerative farming and natural capital community. NCA’s Digby Sowerby and Tom Vacher attended across the two days, meeting with farmers, landowners, partners, investors and a wide range of stakeholders from across the sector.
The breadth of people on one farm continues to make Groundswell one of the most valuable events in the calendar. We had productive meetings spanning soil carbon, biodiversity net gain, nutrient markets, and green finance, reflecting the growing maturity and commercialisation of nature markets across England.
On the business development front, we had valuable conversations with sustainability leads from across the agricultural supply chain, including Velcourt and Buitelaar, on soil carbon, a market that continues to attract serious corporate interest as businesses seek credible, farm-level solutions to their net zero commitments.
The government presence at Groundswell was notable, with ministers and senior officials across the room. Like many in the sector, we are conscious that the change in government has introduced some delay into the policy pipeline, particularly around farm support and collaboration funding, but the direction of travel remains encouraging and our conversations with the Defra team left us broadly optimistic.
One theme that ran strongly through many of our conversations was the growing appetite for outcomes-based approaches to environmental land management – rewarding land managers for measurable, verified environmental results rather than for following prescribed practices. This aligns closely with how NCA structures its natural capital projects, and it was encouraging to find that sentiment gaining real traction across farmers, corporate buyers, and policymakers alike.
We’re already looking forward to next year. If you were at Groundswell and didn’t get a chance to connect, please do get in touch.