Ian Davis
June 2022

Regenerative farm management to reverse ecological decline

This webinar outlined the changes UK agriculture has undergone since the end of the Second World War, the so-called “Green Revolution”, it explored the major drivers behind the changes and the often unintended impacts they have had on the UK landscape. The speaker, Ian Davis illustrated this with examples from his own farming and environmental experience and set out the wide range of in current practices in UK farming across the arable and pastoral sectors.
 
Following this, Ian described fundamental principles of regenerative agriculture and why this is different from current mainstream agricultural thinking. He explained how regenerative agricultural management offers the scope to reverse the ecological decline driven by modern intensive farming whilst continuing to produce food from the land in much the same quantity and potentially at greater profitability and higher nutrient density. He used examples from his own experience to highlight how virtuous circles of management change can be created which facilitate ecological diversity recovery, increase resilience to pests, while reducing or eliminating the need for agrochemical inputs, and increase resilience to climate challenges.