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🌍 Why Farmers Change — My Nuffield Report (coming soon)...
After 6,500 miles (and only one blown tyre 🚗💨), 100s of farmers 👩🌾👨🌾, 22 months, and 9 countries 🌏, I’m proud to have completed my (1) Nuffield report — Why Farmers Change: Ideas from soil management shifts around the world.
When I first applied for a Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust, I thought I’d be researching how farms could share and benchmark data — a natural extension of what we were building at Soil Benchmark. But travelling across Europe, South America and Australia, it became clear that better data alone isn’t enough to drive change on farm.
At its heart, this project became about something bigger: why farmers change.
From drought-hit growers in Western Australia 🌾 and cotton farmers in northern NSW 🌞, to Denmark’s ERFA groups 🇩🇰 and Argentina’s CREA network 🇦🇷, the patterns were strikingly similar. Wherever change was happening, it followed the same three steps:
💡 Motivate: first, a reason to care. Six consistent motivators, from crises to community to benchmarking.
🧭 Advise: once motivated, farmers need trusted, practical guidance. Well-run, well-funded farmer groups were the closest thing I found to a silver bullet.
💰 Fund: change only sticks when it’s financially viable. England’s Sustainable Farming Incentive is world-leading, and my report sets out how it can be refined to have even greater impact.
📊 And underpinning it all: monitoring, which drives motivation, learning, and accountability.
🎤 Hear it first in Aberdeen
I’ll be presenting my findings at the Nuffield Farming Conference in Aberdeen on Thursday 20th November, alongside an inspiring line-up of scholars exploring everything from cutting methane and antibiotics, to reshaping the beef supply chain, to tackling farm succession and food system resilience.
🎟️ Today’s the final day to book tickets.
📘 Get early access
The full video summary and report will be published soon — but if you’d like early access, you can sign up here
It’s split into three main chapters — Motivation, Advice, and Funding. Each has sections for different audiences: policymakers, agronomists, grower-group facilitators, funders, and farmers.
At the end, you’ll find 19 practical recommendations (see attached).
Whether you’re a policymaker, advisor, farmer, or simply curious about how real change spreads, I hope it offers ideas that resonate far beyond soil management itself.
To everyone who had me to stay 🏡, met up off the back of some often very tenuous introductions, and gave their time to a travelling Brit — thank you. You were all so generous, and each of you has shaped both the findings and me. If you’re ever in the UK, you’re always welcome. I tried to include selfies with as many of you as I could 🤳 — apologies if I didn’t take one with you!
And a huge thank you to the Yorkshire Agricultural Society for sponsoring my scholarship 🙏
