Mike Purnell
2023
Mike has been the Farm Manager of Whitbread Farms in central Bedfordshire since autumn 2018. The farm transitioned to regenerative agriculture in 2016 when it became apparent that the ‘conventional’ farm practice and rotation was detrimental to the economic, social and environmental standing of the farm.
The in hand farming operation covers 1000 hectares of arable cropping and a wide range of soil types, 200 hectares of environmental and a rare bread suckler beef enterprise that mob graze the estate’s parkland.
By all the tools currently available the farm is showing itself to be healthily carbon negative, with no offsetting outside the immediate farmed area.
Prior to this role, Mike converted a heavy land farm on the Sussex Weald to ‘no till’.
My Sessions
Is it Time to Certify Regenerative Agriculture?
Helen Browning OBE
Mike Purnell
Judith Batchelar OBE
Catherine Chong
Rosie Boycott
One of the first issues in discussions about how to scale up Regenerative Farming is the challenge of defining it. What exactly constitutes Regenerative Agriculture? What does a farmer have to do to become ‘regenerative’? What is ‘regeneratively produced’ food? This lack of strict rules and focus on principles and context is, to some proponents, […]