EFG Knowledge Hub
In 2024, the GWCT Allerton Project received funding from the Golden Bottle Trust, a charitable foundation organised by Hoares Bank (C. Hoare & Co.). The funding has been used to support the ‘EFG Knowledge Hub’ project; running from the beginning of 2024 to end of 2025.
The main aim of the project has been to assist farmers in adopting more sustainable and regenerative farming practices, by delivering a pilot programme of training made available primarily to farmers who join the Environmental Farmers Group (EFG). The training has been delivered under the umbrella concept of regenerative agriculture, providing EFG farmers with advice and support on how to adapt and improve their farming systems, with the aim of achieving the EFG’s three key environmental outcomes:
Biodiversity and
species recovery
Clean water
Net carbon zero
farming by 2040
The EFG is an environmental cooperative, farmer-owned and farmer-led – Environmental Farmers Group – Farmers protecting and enhancing nature for the public good. Its mission is to harness scale and member cooperation to secure the best environmental results and financial returns for a wide range of natural capital goods and services. The EFG was launched in May 2022 in the Hampshire Avon catchment. Since then, the EFG has grown considerably, consisting now of five additional catchments (Test & Itchen, Dorset Stour, Northern Lincs, Central England and Isle of Wight), involving 585 farmers and covering a total land area of approximately 387,000 hectares.
EFG Knowledge Hub Handbook: Financing Natural Capital
We would like to thank Hoares Bank and the Golden Bottle Trust for providing us with the generous funding to facilitate the EFG Knowledge Hub project. We believe the project has been incredibly beneficial for the farming community as well as those who support it.
In order to add legacy to the project and make it easy and accessible to locate the wide variety of resources that have been created, we have made a handbook titled: ‘EFG Knowledge Hub: Financing Natural Capital’. The online pdf handbook can be accessed here:
To kill a woodland, making big decisions on Ash dieback, by Jobe Burnham.
When I joined the Allerton Project in 2024, I was excited to see the woodland management plan. Or perhaps I was more...
The project is funded by the Golden Bottle Trust, a charitable cause organised by Hoares Bank (C. Hoare & Co.). While The GWCT Allerton Project is the main delivery team for the training, we are collaborating with several additional organisations to produce a comprehensive, relevant and practical programme of webinars, videos and material, supported by occasional, local on-the-ground workshops.
The training covers a wide range of regenerative agriculture principles and practices, focussing on the following key themes:
- Environmental Land Management (ELM), Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) & green finance
- Soil & water management
- Enhancing resilience to climate change
- Farm carbon management
- Cropping, agronomy and rotations
- Habitats, species and integrated pest management (IPM)