Charter announced to define and underline agroecology – Farmers Guide

Since the hugely successful inaugural Hutchinson’s Agroecological Conference in 2023, there has been a huge uptake in agroecology across UK farms. Even so the practice remains relatively niche, and this needs to change. Head of agroecology Ed Brown opened the 2024 Hutchinsons Agroecology Conference with the announcement of an industry first Agroecological Charter.

The terms regenerative or agroecological have become watered down meaning they are in danger of losing their impact. To avoid this, where claims are made around regenerative credentials, be it large corporations, retailers, or farmers themselves, this needs to be evidenced.

As with all change there is a risk to changing practice and moving into new territory. Unfortunately, for various reasons, agroecological farming practices are often poorly understood or implemented – which inevitably means they go wrong. So the farmer loses income, probably also confidence of the system- and ultimately none of the goals have been met.

Taking these challenges into account, Hutchinsons has worked hard with leading industry experts to produce the first Agroecology Charter, which will be published later this year.

Hutchinsons Agroecology Charter will:

• Clearly define the meaning of agroecology
• Outline key management processes including objective setting and resource building
• Highlight key risks associated with them and ultimately reduce the chances of costly mistakes
• Point to the relevant tools and resources to reduce risk.

To understand the impact of adopting agroecological practices over a conventional approach on farm performance, it is crucial to look at the data, and truly understand the financial implications of a certain approach, was a clear message from Hutchinsons farm business consultant, Will Foyle.

Much of the data needed to be able to do this, is already to hand, pointed out Mr Foyle. “Most farms will have yield data and input data, such as spray records, fertilisers and seed costs, even if these can only be related back to invoices. Then bring in fixed costs from fuel, labour, and other sundry overheads, which will help to provide a base level cost of production at a farm enterprise level or even a field or subfield level if overlaying a yield map.”

So how can this data be used to inform decision making on farm and assess one approach or, for example, type of machinery against another when choosing to move over to a more agroecological approach?

“Having these figures to hand, is enough to provide a base level cost of production or net margin at a field level, to compare different systems or rotations. For example, comparing the financial performance of one part of a field against another, or in monetary terms the impact of moving away from a winter barley to two years of herbal ley under SFI,” said Mr Foyle.

But, he added, equally as important is quantitative data. “This is based on soil data; most farms will have information to hand on soil nutritional data such as soil pH, organic matter, soil organic carbon, and perhaps even worm counts, Vess scores, water infiltration.

“This quantitative data can help inform management decisions in the short term as to how any changes are affecting soil health, to indicate if going along the right route and reflects the building blocks for long term success.

“Improvement of these figures will ultimately give better financial performance in the long run, and itis key to understand these especially when looking to monitor change in a farming system to justify the right decisions are being made,” he noted.

He recognised there can be an unavoidable drop in yields from agroecological farming in the short term, which must be justifiable. “With current margins it doesn’t take much of a drop off in yields for incomes to become unsustainable. Unless achieving premiums, yield should remain king, and ensuring this is the goal underlines the importance of the correct advice.”

“Where agroecology is carried out correctly overall spend can be potentially reduced, with net margin increasing, reducing exposure to risk and fundamentally building more resilient farm businesses.”