Farm Gate

Martin Lines (Nature Friendly Farming Network), and ffinlo Costain (Farm Gate) discuss England's hot-off-the-press Farming Roadmap - what to make of Brexit 10-years on - what values Andy Burnham might bring to Number 10 - and the new UK/EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement.They are joined by Alex Gray, a farming and environment lecturer on the Brooksby campus of Loughborough College, and ask how to get progressive farming better-embedded into college and university courses, and how to attract young people into agroecological farming practice.#farming #AndyBurnham #policy #Agroecology #regenag #climatecrisis #foodsystem #naturalcapital

ffinlo Costain talks to Dr Frédéric Leroy (Vrije University, Brussels) and Dr Jason Rowntree (Michigan State University).Frédéric and Jason's new research paper argues that while livestock systems represent a considerable environmental challenge, anti-livestock and anti-meat perspectives over-simplify the issues, ignore regional variations, and rely on unbalanced carbon accounting. They argue that carbon tunnel vision is a threat to good climate policy.* Find out more and read the research at 8point9.com

The creation of bustling, thriving regional economies is an enormous opportunity to create food system resilience - and to bring wealth and wellbeing to rural areas. To do this we need infrastructure - and we need the finance to support the rebuilding and the re-establishing of that infrastructure.A new report from the Place Finance Lab addresses these issues. ffinlo Costain is joined by the report authors and founding partners of the Place Finance Lab: Tamara Giltsoff and Matteo Vanzini, and by report contributor Matthew Thomson, a director of Sustainable Food Cornwall.The Place Finance Lab has been incubated at Climate KIC, which has also supported this podcast - Climate KIC is Europe’s leading climate innovation agency and community, creating climate-resilient communities and fighting climate breakdown by mobilising systems change in countries, regions, cities, and businesses. Together with partners across the globe, Climate KIC orchestrates solutions and facilitates learning to bridge the gap between climate commitments and current reality, driving faster and more ambitious action.

This is the third of our programmes investigating Pathways - a 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project that's been running since 2021.We discuss the scenarios work that provided the foundations for Pathways. These were designed as plausible future storylines for how European livestock systems might evolve under different economic, environmental, technological, and social conditions. In particular, they helped researchers to test trade-offs between different sustainability goals and outcomes. ffinlo Costain is joined by Pierre-Marie Aubert, director of agriculture and food policies at the French think tank, IDDRI - by Dr Tom Staton, a senior research fellow at the University of Reading - and by Dr Jessica Bosseaux, a postdoctoral research associate, also at the University of Reading.

This is the second of our programmes investigating the Pathways project - a 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project that's been running since 2021. Today we’re looking at Pathways modelling, which addressed a range of important areas including the greenhouse gas emissions and nutritional value associated with livestock and individual food products, as well as farm animal welfare and biodiversity impacts in livestock systems.ffinlo Costain (8point9.com) is joined by Dr David Yáñez (Spanish National Research Council), Pierrick Girad (French Institute of Pork), Dr Jenny Ygnvesson (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) and Dr Tom Staton (University of Reading).More land use news at 8point9.com.

ffinlo Costain and Martin Lines (farmer and chief exec of the Nature Friendly Farming Network) discuss water - and how nature and beavers work to keep it in the landscape. They're joined by guests, Ali Morse, the Water Policy Manager at The Wildlife Trusts, and Chris Jones from Woodland Valley Farm and the Cornwall Beaver Project.

A 5-year EU Horizon 2020-funded research project - Pathways - has been running since 2021. It aims to reduce environmental impacts while addressing societal demands for safe, nutritious and affordable meat and dairy products. Over the next two or three months we'll investigate the project and its outcomes across six episodes, and meet some of the academics leading the research.In this programme we'll find out more about the origins of the Pathways project - its objectives and chief priorities.ffinlo Costain is joined by Dr Laurence Smith, Associate Professor in Agricultural Systems at the University of Reading - by Dr Jessica Stokes, Associate Professor in Farm Animal Welfare Science and Policy at the Royal Agricultural University - by Dr Catherine Pfeifer, lead researcher in the FiBL Switzerland Agri-Food Systems Group - and by Dr Nikki Yoxall, the Technical Director at Pasture for Life.

A new report, the RegenCompass Version 1.0, developed by EARA (Euro Alliance for Regen Agriculture), offers the first comprehensive, farmer-led evaluation of the systems designed to identify and distinguish genuine regeneration while remaining accessible and valuable to the farmers doing the work. The report evaluated 29 monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems.ffinlo Costain joined by report author, Simon Kraemer, co-founder and policy steward at the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture - by regen farmer, Clare Hill, from Planton Farm - and by Adele Jones from Rooted Strategies who worked for many years with the Sustainable Food trust on the Global Farm Metric.Read the report here: https://8point9.com/eara-releases-first-farmer-led-assessment-of-regen-verification-systems/https://8point9.com/eara-releases-first-farmer-led-assessment-of-regen-verification-systems/