Future Farmer Anna Pennell is a first-generation sheep and pig farmer near Catterick Garrison, and was one of four Future Farmers to successfully apply for a Future Farmers bursary place at this year’s Groundswell festival – here, Anna reports back.
Earlier in the summer, I was awarded a bursary place at Groundswell 2024.
It was an incredible experience and thank you to the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and Future Farmers of Yorkshire for giving me the opportunity.
The Groundswell festival in Hertfordshire provides a forum for farmers, growers, or anyone interested in food production and the environment to learn about the theory and practical applications of regenerative farming systems.
It has been on my radar for a few years, but it exceeded all my expectations.
Progressive and relevant
The whole event has a real festival of farming feel about it, the fundamental attitude was so incredibly positive.
As one of the many interesting speakers said, Groundswell is about the positive of farming and meeting any problems with solutions, it is not about moaning!
Coming from a ‘wool’ background, I tried to mix up my experience by both attending some of the more wool and fibre-based talks as well as just expanding my farming knowledge and experience.
I hit the ground running with an interesting talk on the ‘Future of small abattoirs and local meat’.
It was interesting to hear about a model being practised in the South West using a cooperative mobile abattoir system that toured various ‘hubs’ and how they intend to expand this over time.
As someone who is a frequent user of my brilliant local small abattoir for direct-to-consumer meat box sales, the risk of losing it to increasing red-tape and legislation is a real concern, so it was great to hear different approaches as well as some of the incentives from DEFRA to help smaller abattoirs.
Another real highlight of my first day was to listen to Canadian speaker Odette Menard on CROP concept and soil compaction.
She was a super engaging and interesting speaker who really helped to focus the mind on the four components – cover, roots, oxygen, porosity – that work together to make a healthy soil.
I was also fortunate to catch her speaking the next day on the very clever Rainfall simulator showing the benefit of various ground covers both in terms of rainfall run-off as well as nutrient leaching.
From the farmers’ mouth
One of the key things that I found about Groundswell is the number of farmers there that were talking about their own experiences.
They could tell us what had worked and what had not in their own farms and real situations, and I found this invaluable.
One of my favourite talks from the second day was held by LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) on ‘How do we inspire the next generation of sustainable food producers?’
It was so good to hear from both young people alongside farmers already effectively engaging with the next generation mostly working with LEAF.
This is something I feel very enthusiastic about and I think one of the most valuable things to come out of the two days at Groundswell was a plan and the contacts to help me move forward with this on my farm.
I came away from a brilliant two days absolutely inspired, with a hundred more questions about my farming journey than I went with, but also a book full of the contacts of helpful people who want to see our farming industry succeed and are so enthusiastic about what they do.
Thank you once again to Future Farmers for giving me the bursary to attend, I would really recommend it to anyone interested in the future of agriculture, whatever sector that might be in.
Anna Pennell is passionate about farming British Native and Rare breeds. She keeps some 350 ewes as well as rearing and breeding critically rare breed Large Black pigs.
Anna also has a flourishing meatbox business, selling direct to consumers, as well as a growing wool business as she keeps Wensleydale Longwools amongst other native breeds of sheep.
Membership of Future Farmers of Yorkshire is free and without obligation.
