The Fonthill Estate’s farming ethos is that wildlife and commercial food production should thrive alongside each other. The 1702 ha of calcareous silty loam soils that make up the in-hand farms at Fonthill are managed by Velcourt Ltd under a contract farming agreement.
The new farming strategy introduced in 2022 has helped transform the farming landscape. Crop diversity was increased to 9 crops, blending autumn and spring-sown crops with cover-crops to provide the species variety, year-round cover, seasonality and required patchwork to allow nature to thrive alongside commercial food production. The farm has set out to be carbon positive using the new rotation, substantial amounts of organic manure and reduced intensity of cultivations to reduce diesel by 40% and bagged fertiliser by 33%. Aiming to better understand the impact of these changes the farm has used Ecometric carbon measurement program on 500ha since 2023. This program has independently verified annual carbon sequestration rates of c12t/ha and is now being rolling out across the whole of the farmed area.