The FarmED Podcast: From IT to Bees
Sep 03, 2025
Something a little different for this episode of The FarmED Podcast, which covers computer systems and farming systems and a little agricultural history too. You’ll discover why farmers grow grass as well as what AI and beekeeping have in common.
Alex is joined by Paul Totterdell, who started his career studying IT and is now Director of FarmED’s sister company, Cotswold Seeds, which supplies 20,000 UK farmers with diverse seed mixtures that are good for soil health, animal health and the health of the planet.
Around 75% of UK's land is farmed agriculturally, Paul explains, and a huge proportion of that is grassland. ‘All the grass that you see out there in the fields when you're driving past, that hasn't just grown there by itself. We've had to plant that. A lot of people don't realise that grass needs to be planted.’
Paul tells us how the agricultural upheavals after the end of the Second World War created a reliance on fertiliser and high yielding ryegrass. Shallow-rooted, the plants struggle in the drought conditions we’ve seen this summer. ‘Cotswold Seeds have been looking for many, many years at different novel plants that we can plant alongside the ryegrasses and sometimes without any ryegrass whatsoever,’ Paul explains.
He goes on to talk about a new scientific research project which Cotswold Seeds and FarmED are both involved in, known as CHCx3, which is looking at how plants can capture carbon from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change.
Paul also talks about how all of this relates to bees. Paul’s apiary was the very first project to be introduced at FarmED, long before the other livestock and crops arrived.
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Links:
Centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping Project
Full Transcription
Alex: Hi everyone, Alex here. Just wanted to take a moment of your time to say that at the start of July, myself and Gareth, our chef, went down to London to the Catey Awards, where we won the Sustainable Business Award. And I just wanted to take a chance to thank everyone who works in the Cafe so hard, all the team and everyone who works in the kitchen for everything they do in our catering and hospitality side. Excellent job. This is your award. Well done. Let's get on with the podcast. Thank you.
Love is like wildflowers blooming in the most unlikely of places. Welcome back to our barn, FarmED for The FarmED Podcast. I'm Alex Dye, I'll be your farm hand for today. And today I'm here to talk to Director of Cotswold Seeds, beekeeper, canoe enthusiast, dog father and an all-round lovely chap, it's Paul Totterdell. How are you today?
Paul: I’m very well thank you Alex, you're very very kind, probably too kind.
Alex: So you're the Director of Cotswold Seeds. How did you get involved with the world of wildflowers and seeds and agriculture in general?
Paul: Well it's a pretty interesting story. It's not the traditional way into an agricultural job. And it is a very agricultural business, Cotswold Seeds. That's one of the great things about it is you get to talk to farmers and deal with people who manage the land all the time. But my training wasn't traditionally in that. My training was in IT, believe it or not.
I did a degree in intelligent systems, which is effectively AI, and media system, multimedia system. So it seems really weird that I ended up in an agricultural company. But it happened that way because I just needed a job in my gap year, really. Before I went to university, I thought, well, I'm a big lad. I can move some seed around, why don't I apply for a labouring job in a warehouse and I really really enjoyed it. It opened my eyes to a rural world that I hadn't seen before, even though I'd lived in the countryside my whole life and even worked on a farm occasionally. But yeah, so I said to Ian after university, through which I worked high days and holidays at Cotswold Seeds, just mixing seed, which was fascinating in its own right. I said to Ian, well, I could go to London and sit behind a desk, which is not what I really wanted to do, but I could have done, and programmed for a living and done very well, thank you very much, but I didn't want to do that. So I gave him the option of me staying at Cotswold Seeds. The angle being that with my IT knowledge, my computer knowledge, I could sort of update the company and bring it up to the modern standards, what with computing and so on. At that point, they were only on very sort of rudimentary IT systems and things. And I brought that element to it. So that was nice to be able to build the Cotswold Seeds website proper for the first time, to build a really good computer network. All these things that are completely unrelated to grass and seeds and plants and wildflowers and all the things that you mentioned. But that's how it began. And then it went from strength to strength.
I was spending more and more time in the office doing those IT tasks, shared with still working downstairs in the warehouse. That was a fun balance to strike. And then eventually I started to listen to Ian. I started to absorb by osmosis all the wonderful information that he was talking to farmers about and the way that he interacted with farmers and the importance of all that customer service and things. But in a very human way, in a very normal human way. And so, you know, best training I could have had and as they say, you know, the rest is down to history and here I am now and joining Ian on the board.
Alex: I think I might have jumped the gun a little bit by assuming that a lot of people will know, I mean, I assume most people will know who Cotswold Seeds are and what you do, but who are Cotswold Seeds and what do you do?
0:04:33
Paul: It’s a good question because everyone puts it in their own context, don't they? And everyone has their own view of what their own business does. So Cotswold Seeds, I would say, is a small, very approachable, friendly company and we have experts in small seeds. What we do is we sit on the phone and we talk to farmers for as long as they want to talk and quite often we don't make a sale, we're quite happy with that. I think that's probably what makes us a bit different, we can afford to spend time talking to customers for long periods of time, really understanding what it is that they want from every little acre that they're planting. That and the ability to then mix bespoke, which is, it's still, it's amazing just how many people love that service. But put those two things together, you know, really, really good quality mixing and good quality advice with no limits. And that's what sort of built our business. And now we speak to 20,000 farmers, we've got an amazing team back at Cotswold Seeds, Sam Lane is now heading that team, I've passed over to him and he's doing an absolutely spectacular job of it, you know he's turning that place around and making changes that I would never have made which is what it's all about you know and you know I'm really really chuffed with how that's going. It's really going in a really positive direction.
0:05:08
We're doing more investing now in the company and equipment and people. And so, yeah, it's just a really nice place to be. But the key is not to get too big. You get too big, you lose control over the quality of the advice. And it becomes a, you end up with a small fish in a big ocean. I think we really like that sort of personal, sort of family atmosphere that we have, and we have a good giggle. Very, very busy when we're in season, but very quiet out of season.
0:05:34
And we've started other business enterprises to try and keep us busy and keep everyone employed. And that's been a lovely thing to be able to do. We started up a company called Cotswold Logs some years ago because we just hated laying people off over the winter. And yeah, it was a bit of a nightmare because then you had to retrain in the spring when it got busy on seeds again. So it was really, really nice to be able to maintain that staff through the winter by delivering logs of all things. But where we are in the Cotswolds, you know, it's all quite a wealthy area and there's a lot of log burners around and nobody wants to stack logs. So we saw an opportunity there and we thought, well, that's what we can do during the winter. We underestimated the overlap. We underestimated how many people would be buying logs in the middle of June and July. Yes, yes, it happens. But not too many, thankfully. But yeah, it's been a voyage of discovery, but it's really complimented seeds, I think. And I think it means that the seed mixes that go out the door are just getting better and better because they're being mixed by people who really know what they're doing. And they've been with us for a long time.
0:06:26
Alex: And by retaining those staff over the times where you would otherwise have had to let them go, like you say, you're keeping not only the skill, but also their enthusiasm.
Paul: They feel rewarded for the family atmosphere and we share experiences and you know it's not hello and cheerio every year. That’s what it was like when I first started you know there's only three of us in the warehouse and I was the temporary one you know I was only there at holidays and things and yeah it's a whole different company now and it's it's fantastic it's fantastic to see it grow it's fantastic to be working alongside Ian now on the less day-to-day related matters.
And Sam is doing an absolutely spectacular job of that back at Cotswold Seeds. And yeah, I'm just really proud and grateful. And it's just a lovely organisation to work for. You know, we're not, the nice thing is that we're not commercial. We're not particularly commercial. We don't, you know, we just wait for people to call us because it's such a lovely position to be in because we have the knowledge and we love sharing it with people. And that's partly why we're so fond of FarmED and so proud of that achievement that we've managed to create with the team that runs FarmED because we're currently at FarmED at the moment. They run a spectacular ship here.
0:07:38
And now Cotswold Seed staff, we rarely get involved and it's fantastic. And I think that's the way it should be. But we dip in and out as best we can and we try and keep the connection going. But it's just lovely to see that knowledge exchange part of the business grow and to have its own identity and be operating completely under its own steam and that's lovely. It's a nice resource to have and to see it grow. It's amazing.
Alex: I think I'll put a pin in that just for a moment and come back to the FarmED thing. But I was wondering if you could tell us, if you're a farmer, why would you want to buy lots of grass seeds? Why would you want to buy grass seeds or wildflower seeds? Why would you be interested in that sort of thing?
Paul: So there's lots of reasons.
0:08:17
I mean, a huge part of the UK is managed agriculturally, the vast majority of it. And a vast majority of that vast majority is grassland. So I think you're talking about roughly I think about 75% of UK's land is farmed agriculturally and a huge proportion of that is grassland. And all the grass that you see out there in the fields when you're driving past on main roads and small roads and things, that doesn't just live there automatically. That hasn't just grown there by itself.We've had to plant that. And a lot of people don't realise that grass needs to be planted. It doesn't just grow naturally in an area.
0:08:57
So traditionally in the UK most of the grass that's sown is ryegrass. And ryegrass was absolutely fantastic just after the war, loads of fertiliser available because of course, all the efforts that were going into the war to produce all the various different oil-based materials for the war, those companies had nothing to do once the war had completed, thankfully, and it was over. So what they did is they changed their focus over to fertiliser production.
0:09:44
And so that's why there was such a glut of fertiliser available and so cheaply. And so ryegrass works really well, fertiliser and woof up you come the green revolution, lots of lovely grass to feed the nation and the animals which in turn feed the nation as well as all the crops and things. But that ryegrass isn't very good in extreme weather conditions, it really struggles in the dry, it really struggles in the heat. And it's very, very good at having really, really good feed quality. Lots of carbohydrate in there and sugars and things, which is great. You know, we need that as well. But that's not everything. And because of its limitations with its growth habit and root structure, Cotswold Seeds have been looking for many, many years at different novel plants that we can plant alongside the ryegrasses. And sometimes without any ryegrass whatsoever. And eventually you get to mixtures, you may have heard of them, called herbal leys, you know, diverse multi-species mixtures. And that's really our USP because there's not a lot of expertise out there in it to be able to pull these mixtures together from lots of different species and create a mixture and there's lots of technical difficulties with creating mixtures and things that you need to know and that's the information we have over at Cotswold Seeds and we can put all these plants together on the fly from just from experience alone to create mixtures specifically for certain purposes. One purpose might be to feed cattle sheep, another purpose might be just to make it look green, another purpose might be to get a subsidy payment in order to plant pollen and nectar margins around your fields for the birds and the bees which of course you're very very interested in I know.
0:08:57
Others are beetle banks, you know things that we encourage the movement of beetles across fields. All sorts of different environmental schemes that involve using these small seeds. And so what we generally do is we do the grasses, legumes like clovers, all sorts of different clovers, herbs like chicory and burnet and sheep's parsley, but also all the things like the wildflowers and all the different environmental schemes that are out there. Lots of different prescriptions and different mixtures you can put together that each need to be tailored to each individual field.
Alex: Am I right in thinking that herbal lays as a farming concept is not necessarily a new thing?
0:11:58
Paul: No, not at all. I think most people in the farming circle in the UK would probably be in agreement that Ian Wilkinson and yourselves at Cotswold Seeds have kind of brought it back big time, the herbal ley, but it's looking into older ideas of things that used to work and things that people used to do with pasture land.
Alex: Is that right?
Paul: Absolutely, 100% right. We're not reinventing the wheel, but we kind of are. We're not reinventing it in the sense that it was a traditional practice. It was something which every farmer did, almost without even trying. You were growing fields that contained many species of different plants. And not every weed was seen as a weed. Some weeds were seen as beneficial or medicinal plants, or perhaps we didn't know at that point. But the animals were eating them and we were getting the benefit, maybe without even knowing that that was happening. Then the green revolution that I mentioned, you know, with the advent of that fertiliser being readily available meant that the ryegrasses grew really well, so all the seed producers and all the seed companies decided to grow and sell ryegrass only, pretty much only, maybe a bit of white clover, maybe a bit of Timothy.
And then they moved on to the production of these this wider spectrum of different species. And, but, still only very few people are doing it. And what we're able to do these days compared to the olden days, as it were, is that we can use modern plant varieties. And this is the bit where we are kind of reinventing the wheel. We can use modern plant varieties in an old fashioned system to try and get the most out of that older fashion system but it has its disadvantages you know you unfortunately with all the breeding that's gone on because of the availability of this nitrogen fertiliser that means that the breeding has been done in line with that response so naturally farmers want plants that respond really really well to nitrogen. But sadly, not many do. Well they do, the grasses tend to respond quite well, but a lot of the other plants which are really important, really don't like a lot of nitrogen, partly because it's their job to fix it themselves. Things like clover.
0:13:59
So clover is really, really important to not have to use nitrogen, because clover will fix that nitrogen from the atmosphere, as we know it's abundant in the atmosphere. And they're so clever. They've got this little arrangement with bacteria in the soil and they do a little swap, basically carbohydrate for nitrogen. And so the plant says, look, I've photosynthesised, I've got lots of carbohydrate from photosynthesising.
0:14:22
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to swap it with soil bacteria and I'm going to get from the soil bacteria the nitrogen from the air, effectively, the bacteria process. So it's a swap, basically, with carbohydrates for nitrogen. And so that's just a synergy, that's one synergy between two types of plant. And in some of these herbal leys there's 17 types of plants. So there's loads of synergies still to discover and to understand.
0:14:51
What we do is we see it, and the team back at Seeds, every day revising on how to achieve lots of different characteristics from one mixture. And I think that's a really attractive prospect, you know, to be able to get a payment from the government and to get forage from it and to have these ecosystem benefits to, you know, encourage the development and the maintenance of all these birds, bees, insects, all these things. With herbal leys we're able to do all of them. They are a bit more difficult but they are, they've got a lot of, a lot of potential I think. They're not the answer to everything but they're part of the picture.
0:15:25
Alex: So could they be used, I'm asking this question knowing the answer, but could you use them say in a rotation, if you were refusing to use your nitrogen fertilisers, you didn't want to use your synthetic nitrogen, would there be a way to utilise either the herbal leys or some of the nitrogen fixing plants like you're saying to do the job for you, to do the job of that synthetic nitrogen?
0:15:47
Paul: Yeah I mean that's effectively what we're doing it for, yeah that's exactly the reason we're doing it. So we have these, and it's all about crop rotation at the end of the day, about mixed farming crop rotation. It's easy to become very polarised in agriculture and to focus on one particular type of plant or one particular type of crop, but then one possible outcome of that is that you end up losing soil fertility because you're not putting it back in and you put fertility back into the soil. So let's say you've grown a cereal crop, let's say some wheat, that's obviously taken nutrition out of the soil. It's reduced the health of the soil if you like and so we need to replenish that in some way. One way we can do that is we can have animals grazing an area for a period of time, pooing on the area and reintroducing all of those lovely microorganisms and fertility back into the soil. You can have plants growing on the area which are beneficial to the soil. So again, so this herbal ley system is very much both of those things, it's plants which improve soil and also animals grazing those plants which is also improving the soil. Of course, you can do it artificially, but that's what we're trying to avoid. And so yes, your follow on crops. So after you've taken out away that herbal mixture or that grass mixture, whatever it might be, you can then plant your cash crop and your cash crop might be any of the cereals, wheat, barley, oats, so on and so forth. And so the idea is very much as you say, to create this crop rotation where you're giving yourself a chance to not only improve the soil in between your cash crops, but really importantly there's other pests and weeds and things out at the moment which are a real problem.
I mean, wild oats are a really common one, but these days we have something called black grass. It's been around for a while now. It's a real problem in arable crops. And it's building significant chemical resistance. So one of the only ways to combat that is to grow a grass crop and get it grazed. And then the animals keep on top of that for you.
0:17:39
It's almost like a proven method. But because it involves bringing animals back onto the farm which isn't to be sniffed at, it's quite a complicated thing to do. You know the infrastructure you need and the cost and animals, I mean I'm sure we've all seen Mr. Clarkson have fun with various different types of livestock and you know and it's it's no joke keeping livestock. It's really difficult. They do have a habit of just keeling over so we have to do the best we can to look after them. But I think this system of having a soil improving, crop rotating ley, which animals can graze on and then you can follow on with a cereal crop is sort of the holy grail really. There's questions about how much food we can produce like that. But I think the quality of the actual food that is produced, the quality of the soil and the benefits for the farmer for all sorts of reasons, environmentally and also financially, means that this is a method that can't be sniffed out. We have to look at it because I think it's got a lot of potential, very low input, low cost, but we need to increase the knowledge because it's a slightly more complex thing to do.
Alex: So to go back to Cotswold Seeds then, you mentioned about how you brought your systems knowledge, your IT knowledge to the team. How did that change the way that Cotswold Seeds functions and runs as far as the consumer is concerned?
0:19:02
Paul: I’ve got to be really careful not to blow my own trumpet here. But it was at a time when it was just the advent of the internet. And the internet was just gaining momentum. And so in turn with knowing that actually by having a computer you can achieve a lot in a short space of time. You also have to have the software and everything that goes on that in order to allow you to operate.
0:19:23
And my whole aspect was how can I increase the output of Cotswold seeds without having to increase the headcount too much. And so by making the people that do work for us more efficient, using some bespoke programs for processing orders that allow us to create all these wonderful recipes of different species. Being able to print off labels as we see fit for carriers and things like that, for getting the stuff delivered, the official labels that go on the bags, all of that we were able to develop and improve in-house to make it more efficient.
Alex: Is that the Cotswold seeds bags that you're referring to?
Paul: Oh those very famous green Cotswold seeds bags that you might see behind me, yeah, fantastic those things. Don't like the fact that they're plastic, really don't, but they are multiple use and we have to make sure that the seeds get to our customers in one piece and when you're sending an individual bag like this, you know, if anybody has any experience with carriers, sometimes they can be quite robust with your material. So you have to be careful. You have to make sure that the seed gets there in one piece because seed flows like water if you make a little hole in the bag. So that's why these bags have become so popular because they are multiple use. We are always looking at ways of replacing the material that we're using.
0:20:39
Every year we're looking at it, but we have to make sure that we can get the seed to the customer in one piece. And that's important too.
Alex: And you mentioned before, we were chatting before we started recording about how your love of the systems and the IT has been channeled into your enthusiasm for beekeeping.
0:20:57
Paul: Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, my, so the modules I did at university were intelligent systems, which effectively like machine learning and AI. And what that did is when you're doing some of that programming, it's quite funny. You have, if anybody's listened to this podcast from Oxford Brookes University Computer Science Department, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
0:21:18
But we used to have this little program called OB World. And what you would do is you'd have to create lots of little beings and those beings would have lots of little rules attached to them, but not lots actually, just some basic rules, maybe two or three rules. If you see another being, you walk towards it. If you see some grass on the ground, you eat it. And if you are attacked by another being, you die, those sorts of things.
0:21:39
And you've got to build these little systems. And so these are systems of lots of little individual beings which interact with each other to produce an outcome which might not be expected. I immediately saw the connection between that and how bees operate and bee colonies. It's not a very traditional way to come into beekeeping, but it was something which I very early on spotted.
0:22:03
It was nice to have that analogy for me when I was programming. It was because of course I'd worked at Cotswold Seeds by the time I went to university a little bit, so I was kind of a bit tuned into what we were doing at that point, and yeah, yeah, it's a very strange connection, but it was one that worked for me.
And yeah, so I always, you know, to me the world is a huge system of lots of different inputs, it's incredibly complex. And sometimes the outputs are pretty unpredictable. And it's just the same like that with seed mixtures. You put different seeds together in different conditions, you will get unexpected outcomes. But some of them will be really good and unexpected.
0:22:36
Some of them, maybe not so. But you can manage it to try and get the outcomes you want. So yeah, somehow I managed to work IT and artificial intelligence in these things, but it works in my head, which is a very scary place.
0:22:46
Alex: And you keep bees on the farm and at FarmED. Yes. And you mentioned before the link between Cotswold Seeds and FarmED. And you've been on the ground floor here since day one, is that right?
0:22:57
Yes. So I remember the day when I saw Ian, when he came back from having gone to auction, and he was looking rather pale. And I think the words that were going through his head, I'll leave one word out, but what have I done? And I think he's-
0:23:15
Alex: And mortgage.
Paul: Yeah, and mortgage, yeah. But it was, yeah, I remember that day and it was really interesting, but really exciting all at the same time because it was an obvious expansion for, all at the same time because it was an obvious expansion for, at the time, what we thought it might be a model farm for Cotswold seeds.
As it's turned out, it hasn't ended up that way at all. It's got its own identity and does its own thing. But yeah, I put bees into the farm in 2012 or 2013, which feels like yesterday, but it really wasn't was it and I'm really starting to feel my age as these time as these decades fly by but but yeah the bees went in in 2012 2013 and that was a really lovely activity that was the first thing we did on the farm first and the first activity at all we hadn't even planted any crops at that point then we quickly got on with planting some herbal lays and some sainfoin another plant that's very close to my heart, another novel legume which we need to use more. But yeah, it's been a long and winding road and when we bought FarmED it just made sense, it was in the right place, it was the right time and it was a really, really good opportunity and it's turned out spectacularly and the team here are just wonderful. You know. And it's, you know, it's not, which of course, you know, but yeah.
Alex: So we've touched on a little bit about nitrogen fixing as well and a bit about carbon fixation, these plants that take care of these things, but to the average person who might be listening, what is the relevance of greenhouse gases in terms of what is the herbal lay doing in terms of greenhouse gases like carbon and nitrous oxides? Why would Herbal leys be of interest to the average person?
Paul: Well I think firstly the most obvious bit is that because we're planting plants that don't need a lot of fertiliser, that means instantly we're not applying it. So if we're not applying fertiliser, obviously that's a huge benefit. And I think that's probably one of the three sort of big, big hitting benefits of herbal lays is you don't have to use the fertiliser because of course the clovers do that for you, which is lovely. The clovers fix that nitrogen and like I said, they exchange it with the rest of the plants, which is brilliant. So that's a really obvious one. Another really fantastic one, which probably not a lot of people think about, is that using all these wonderful plants that build up a population of different microbes in the soil. These microbes work together and they build homes. And that's what soil is. Soil is a home for microbes. If a soil doesn't have microbes in it, you probably struggle to call it soil and because that's what soil is made of. It's made of organic matter, mixed with rock, mixed with biological organisms and together they make a soil. It's not just mud.
0:26:02
It's quite important that people realise that, that it's a home for lots of bugs and swimmers as I like to call them. Those homes are made of carbon and so are the bugs and the swimmers. So what happens is these plants draw down the carbon through photosynthesis into the ground and all the bugs and swimmers make use of that carbon and keep it locked up in the soil. And we're doing some really, really interesting research at the moment in conjunction with lots of different organisations across the UK, NIAB, Cotswold Seeds obviously, FarmED, Eltham Seeds, you know, lots of different companies, 23 partners in all. And we're working together to try and understand this whole concept, this synergy, this action, this machine, if you like, that draws down that carbon from the atmosphere and locks it up in the soil. Because it's one thing drawing that carbon down, but it's another thing completely keeping it there and trying to keep it stored there. And the key to that is biology. And more plants, more diversity of plants means more diversity of biology, which means more carbon sequestered and held in the soil.
0:27:08
Alex: It seems fairly logical when you put it like that, doesn't it? It just makes sense.
Paul: It is, yeah. But obviously a lot of these things, unless you really work through the logic, you wouldn't necessarily get to that point. And another method, which I think is really interesting, is some of these novel legumes like sainfoin, like bird's foot trefoil, which are, and chicory actually, really, really interesting because they can help the animal to process the nutrition differently.
0:27:32
So instead of doing lots of burping and farting, we can make sure that that energy is better used and maintained in the animal and used for putting on weight and for the health of the animal. So you get these things, for example, in sanfoin, the Latin is Onobrychis viciifolia, it is a plant which was grown in our area in the Cotswolds and our light brashy soil and other areas hundreds of years ago and it used to be a staple crop for feeding working horses and for all the reasons that we've just discussed. It's a nitrogen fixer, but one of the things it has is these tannins, tannins that you like you have in tea, slightly different chemical structure. But these tannins, what they do is they bind onto the protein in the food, as well as other things, like worms and things as well, because they've got health benefits with regards to worms as well. But these tannins, they're quite sticky.
Alex: When you say worms, do you mean nematodes? Parasitic worms.
0:28:27
Paul: Yeah, parasitic worms that we try and keep it to level in animals, otherwise it can hinder the animal. And we have worms in us as well, really, really important. We would not exist without them, but we need to keep them at a sensible level. And I think the way that we've grazed animals in the past has sort of lended itself to them ingesting those worms again, grazing on the same area for long periods of time. And also our artificial wormers that the farming industry has been using, again, a bit like some of those weeds are becoming resistant to some of the chemicals, so are the worms in animals. So we need to find other ways, other more holistic ways of managing worms. And we can use these plants to do it. And so these tannins I was telling you about, because they're sticky on the surface, they stick to the worm. And they stop its mouth from working and they stop it sheathing, taking its outer sheath off. Careful, because I'll get too scientific with you. But essentially, it just disrupts their reproductive cycle, as well as preventing them from eating. And so we can naturally control worms in animals by using a good proportion of these plants in the mixtures. But you have to have a good proportion, not just loads of grass and a little bit of this stuff.
0:29:36
It has to be a fair proportion of the mixture. You're looking for half the mixture you want of these types of plants, if you can.
But going back to what I was saying earlier about the methane reduction and the greenhouse gases, so not only do these tannins help with the worms, they also, with their sticky surfaces, they also bond to the proteins in the food. And so rather than, like you and I, when we're eating we might go like that, just to let a little bit of gas out, that's what happens with cows as well. You know, the food is being processed in their tummies and they're producing gas. And one of those gases is methane, you know, obviously a greenhouse gas. And because these tannins in some of these plants bind onto the protein, they stop the animal from breaking it down in their first stomach. So, you know, these cows and sheep, you know, have multiple stomachs. And so we want the protein, the important stuff, you know, that's going to feed them, we want it to break down in, you know, latterly, you know, in the hind gut, not as soon as they put it in their mouth. And so these tannins can help to prevent that. So, and we've done various projects over the years, looking into this and proving that this is the case. You know, one of them was legume plus, which I was heavily involved with some years ago now, 15 years ago, something like that. And now we're working with, with NIAB and the wonderful Lydia Smith over there on, on this CHC project.
0:30:58
The, so it's the centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping. So it's a lot of C's. But essentially what we're saying is we're looking for crops which are going to help us capture lots of carbon across the agricultural sector, whether that be energy crops that people put into digesters or whatever to create energy, whether it be cover crops to help cover the soil in between crops like over the winter for example, or whether it be in our case like the herbal lays which are in for a period of time. We're just looking at all these different crop types and trying to understand how and how much of this carbon they're going to keep or extract from the atmosphere and hold in the soil.
Alex: So there's lots of different plants and wildflowers and all sorts of things you've mentioned over the course of this conversation, and all the amazing interesting things they do that most people might not realize. I'm going to refer to them as garden variety plants but I don't literally mean they're in your garden as in like the average plants you might see out and about and think there’s nothing special about that it's a dandelion or whatever. Are there any ones that people are seeing day to day that might have a little bit more to them, a little bit more interesting, a little bit more useful than we perhaps give them credit for?
Paul: Yeah, I think, yeah, and there are also some plants which you never see, which are also really important as well, so that you kind of have both ends of the spectrum. So I think if you're looking at a very common plant, which everybody will be used to, if you've gone out to your local recreation ground, typically in the spring, it will be covered in dandelions. Dandelions? They're a weed, aren't they? Well, what's a weed? You know, a weed is just a plant where you didn't expect it or perhaps where you don't want it. I would argue dandelions are probably one of the most valuable bee pollen and nectar sources early in the season of any plant. Another plant which would be a real big one, which farmers would be familiar with as well, would be white clover. Those little white sort of bauble looking flowers that you see in most places. You'll have them in your back lawn, I'm sure. I say-
0:32:56
Alex: That’s a clover that's also fixing the nitrogen as well.
0:32:57
Paul: Absolutely. So that's the clover that's fixing the nitrogen. So yeah, these plants have multiple benefits and a lot of people don't know about them but yeah white clover because it comes out all year round it's a it's a flowers extensively during the year but it's quite hardy it's always there it's reliable stays green over the winter that kind of thing so yeah white clover is a it's sort of an unsung hero really but there are all sorts of other clovers and and flowering plants which are so important. And I think the diversity is the key. Putting these plants together, so you're creating a succession of flowering for the insects and the pollinators, as well as a succession of forage for the animals and things like that as well.
Other plants which are less well-known, that should be better known, and you know what I'm going to say, is sainfoin, because I think it's just the best plant in the world.
0:33:44
But that is an incredible plant. I mean incredible for honey production because it is just a fantastic pollen and nectar source. Pollen and nectar both being very important for bees because they're used for different purposes. You've got the very deep rooting nature of it, you know, so in dry times, and this weather is just getting more extreme, you know, so in dry times, you know, the plants like the sainfoin in these herbal lays and in our environmental verges and, you know, even naturally in the wild are really important for our wildlife. And it's also a legume, so it fixes our nitrogen as we discussed before. It's very palatable, it tastes great for the cows and the sheep. It flowers for a long period of time as well, the sainfoin. If you're not careful, I'm going to talk a lot about sainfoin. But there are these plants which are so important that people don't know about and some of them are in hiding in plain sight. You know, I think hawthorn, you know, is a really important plant that people often overlook. You know, if they're a beekeeper, hawthorn produces pollen and nectar for bees at all ends of the spectrum of the seasons, where other plants have died and gone away, you know, they're not flowering at all. So I think all of these things, not just in our agricultural fields, but they're hiding in plain sight, and people often forget just how important they are. But yeah, it's a good question though, because I think I would say also cowslips, very important. You tend to find cowslips coming up very, very early in the season. And often that's when a lot of insects struggle because the weather's warming up, the plants haven't quite caught up yet. And these few sort of pioneer plants which come out early in the season are vital for the things like bumblebees. I mean you see bumblebees literally bumbling around when the frosts have barely stopped. You think to yourself what on earth are you doing? You know and you think to yourself well I hope you find some cowslips somewhere or some hawthorn or whatever. But yeah fascinating world we live in isn't it? But yeah.
0:35:26
Alex: So to sort of to wrap up, to start to end what we've been chatting about, from what you've seen in terms of your herbal leys and providing for farmers and what farmers are looking for and thinking about in terms of what they need on their land, what do you think the future of food and farming in particular in the UK should look like? What do you think it will look like? What do you think it should look like? That's a very big question look like? What do you think it should look like?
0:36:05
Paul: That’s a very big question. It's a very big question, isn't it? That's a very big question. And if I answer it too specifically, there's a lot of opinions, you know, there's a lot of perspectives and different angles that I will and won't have, you know, and there'll be things that I don't understand. But I would say that we're all tired, well probably, of this word called diversity.
0:36:30
But it's so important in so many aspects of our existence. If we want different types of insect, if we want different types of humans, if we want different types of plants, if we want different types of food, then we have to look at diversity.
0:36:45
And what goes unseen is what is the diversity that is so important in the soil. It all starts with the soil. It looks like just brown stuff that you stand on, but it's vitally important. And I think if going forward that we put as much importance into the maintenance of the soil fertility in a more natural way, then we will have a system which is much more sustainable. Again, another cringe term that's been absolutely, not abused, but sort of used a lot.
Alex: Yeah, co-opted slightly.
Paul: And these terms can be quite faddish. I think that regenerative farming is the way forward. And I think, but that name in itself will get boring. It will get tired.
0:37:29
But the concept is the same. Regenerative farming in my view is just good farming. Rotation where you can, improve the soil where you can so that we can carry on farming into the future for as long as possible. Now, will that produce enough food if every farmer was farming in that way? Maybe, maybe not. But that's not the only method of farming out there, you know, there's lots of different technologies coming about and I don't know which one is going to be the most popular. What I do know though is that if we need to keep farming, if we want to keep farming and we want to look after our environment and we want to look after the arena that we live in, then we're going to have to look after it. And farming, chemical farming in the traditional sense is making that really difficult or has made it really difficult and we can see measured results showing that we've depleted the soil. So I think whatever it looks like, it needs to look or should look diverse. Farm rotations, crop rotations, livestock in the most responsible way possible. And just an understanding that it is a whole system. And if you neglect any one part of it, it will come back to bite you eventually. And unfortunately, probably in your pocket. So it's that sort of forethought and trying to plan for the future. And it's really painful, it's really difficult to do because this regenerative farming business is it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees. and it can mean a lot of different things to different people. I think if you keep at the heart of it, building soil, if you're building soil without using artificial chemicals, then in my view, you're a lot of the way there.
0:39:34
And I think sometimes it's too tempting to try and narrow these phrases down to a specific meaning. And I understand that because in order to get people to understand what we're trying to communicate, there needs to be some kind of framework, there needs to be some kind of understanding or even certification, you know, just like there is in the organic movement. But I think with regen, there's a risk that we might throw the baby out with the bathwater. if we go trying to simplify it too much. It means different things for different people and different activities in different places for different reasons. We have to look at what ground we have and use it to its best potential and try not to force things out of it that it can't give or that it can't give in the longterm. We need to only take what it can afford to give. And then if we have to find other ways around that to supplement our diets, then so be it. But we all need somewhere to live.
0:40:15
Alex: Thank you very much for your time today, Paul. It's been great chatting with you. I think we've covered quite a lot of ground today. Bees and flowers and Cotswold Seeds.
Paul: Yes, we've got quite a lot of soil.
Alex: Thank you very much and thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for tuning into The FarmED Podcast. Give us a review, give us a rating if you've enjoyed it and hopefully we'll see you on the next one and thank you again Paul.
Paul: No, no, thank you. Thanks for listening.
Alex: And thanks to Billy as well. And thanks to Billy as well. Here he is.
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