Let’s all co-own the farm next door | w. Fordhall Farm & Sue Pritchard

0:00Hey everyone and thanks for being here. Just to let you know, we're running a quick survey to see if listening to this podcast affects your sense of hopefulness. The link's in the description. Thanks and enjoy the show. We were left with six months to raise£800 ,000 to save this organic farm. We didn't know what we were doing. We had no money. We also had nothing to lose. In a time full of challenges, we're going to take you on a journey of the possible. I think often we get told that you can't have that or we couldn't possibly do this, but we actually can. Stories that show how ordinary people can take matters into their own hands.

0:36We don't take no for an answer anymore, so we just try and find a way around that. And create a future we all actually want to live in, one that could change our whole country. Just incredible to me. They've basically just been like, these guys aren't going to do it, we're just going to do it ourselves. I'm Marian Pasha. And I'm Matt Golding. Join us on a road trip across the country as each episode we hear from an ordinary community who've done something extraordinary. And then explore what the country could look like if more of us joined in. You can find links to the things we mention on our website antidotelive.studio or videos on our social channels antidotelive.

1:12Sometimes in a world that's not always working out. It's time to say screw this. Let's try something else. so we're gonna go somewhere where a group of people have bought a farm and they've built something that could work better for our food and for farmers and for the land as someone who is probably as far away from a farm as they could get i want to i want to know more well i'm hoping we're going to make you into a farmer marion i think this is not going to be the thing that happens but we will find out check back listen to the end let's go so first off can you quickly introduce yourself and tell us where we're speaking to you from yeah my name's charlotte hollings i'm the general manager of the ford hall community land initiative based at ford hall farm in shropshire charlotte i'm going to start super basic where is shropshire funny you should say that because there's a lot of people that don't know where shropshire is or even that it exists If you were to hang England from a piece of string, that piece of string would land in Shropshire.

2:16You'd be able to equally balance the country. I love that description. A pretty unlikely place for upending the food industry. Yeah, I think that's what everyone else thought. But for the last 20 years, the 140-acre Ford Hall Farm has turned everything we know about agriculture on its head. Ford Hall Farm is a member-owned society and we have about 8 ,000 community shareholders right across the world that collectively own you're a part of that society. Hold on 8 ,000 owners? Exactly right. How does that work? People often say how do you cope with having 8 ,000 landlords doesn't that make like decision making so blooming difficult and actually it's the opposite because what it means is you've got this wonderful, positive, engaged sounding board of people from different experiences, different walks of life, but with a combined vision.

3:10So tell us how you got here. What led to all this? I grew up here at Ford Hall Farm. My late father, Arthur Hollings, also grew up here. We've been tenant farmers at Ford Hall for generations. This is something that I did not know until recently is that I just assume that if you are a farmer farming the land you own that land but that is not often the case Often not, I mean I think there's over 50 % of the land in this country is tenanted So we look this up, the number is actually 33 % so around a third of all farmland and being a tenant farmer is pretty much like renting a flat or a house in that you have to pay to be there and it can also be sold out from under you.

3:52We're in a world now where land is bought and sold like bread and butter by private investors and short-term tenancies are then as a result often given to farmers. Which means less rights for those farmers. Exactly right. There's a kind of shocking stat I found out recently. Over half of this country is owned by 1 % of the people. I mean, that is shocking and yet unsurprising. and I'm assuming that land is not like being bought and sold so people can sell farms and do things. It's sitting in someone's like anonymous investment portfolio making the money and that's it. And yet it's affecting people's lives.

4:30Exactly, which makes farming and the act of producing food pretty low on some landowners' priority list. And that's exactly what happened to Charlotte in the 1990s. A massive dairy conglomerate moved in next door. Our landlord saw the potential to sell Fort Hall for development. He spent all through the 1990s issuing eviction notice after eviction notice to the family. So to put our case forward, we needed solicitors who had to go through the courts, and that cost money. And we'd win one, and then he'd issue another one. For Charlotte's dad, Arthur, it became a vicious cycle. The more money he put into fighting eviction notices, the less money he had to actually farm.

5:08And all of this culminated in one of the eviction notices eventually going in favour of the landowner and we were given a final 12-month eviction notice and were due to leave in the March of 2004. How did it feel, all of that legal wrangling? It was a very negative time and it was a very sad time and Dad was so run down and exhausted by it and Mum couldn't cope. It was really, really hard. The family stood to lose the only home they'd ever known. But not just that. There was something else, because this wasn't just any farm. Charlotte's dad, Arthur Hollins, was a pioneer. When my dad took over the Tennessee in 1929, he was very young.

5:55He was only 14. And at that time, chemical fertiliser was kind of like this magic thing that was going to get everybody to grow lots of food and feed everybody amazingly. And here it is in action, chemical fertiliser, a boon for farmers everywhere that is said to make crops grow like wildfire. But it didn't pan out like that for Arthur. Our soils at Fortwell are very sandy. Dad found that he was having to put more chemical fertiliser on the land to try and maintain those yields because more and more of the natural nutrients were just being washed out of the soil continually. And over time, his crops started to get weaker.

6:31And he was out walking in areas like our woodland at the farm. And he thought, well, how come every year in the woods, it's green, it's lush, it's healthy. It's on exactly the same soil right next door and I'm trying so hard to grow my crops on. And not only was it not working, but Dad was paying for it not to work because he was buying all this chemical fertiliser. And he was just like, this is crackpot. What am I doing wrong? In an article that Arthur wrote many years later, he talks about the herdsman, Old Jim. Here's Charlotte's brother Ben reading Arthur's words. Old Jim assured me that crops grown on farmyard manure were much better than fertilised cash crops.

7:09He said that stuff in them bags won't stay in the soil. It only drives out the valuable earthworms. So Arthur took old Jim's advice and cut out fertiliser and then set about experimenting. If you ever went for a walk with Dad, it was never very long before. He was down on his hands and knees pulling cowpacks apart, you know, and showing you all the life that lives in the soil. And throughout that whole period, he was developing this system called foggage farming. Like, nature's doing it all for free. I'm going to have a bit of that, please. Over five years, Arthur planted a diverse mix of greens and grasses covering his sandy soil.

7:46These tightened the structure of the soil and they allowed his dairy cattle to graze all year round. It's based on diversity, which is what everything in nature relies upon. Diversity gives nature resilience. So over 70 different plants, herbs, shrubs, trees that our livestock are able to access and graze. and that gives them different vitamins, minerals, sugars, fibres, protein. But they're also getting antiviral properties from some of the plants. They're getting painkillers from some of the plants. They're getting blood thinners from some of the plants. Some of them are good for your heart.

8:20Some of them are good for your liver, which keeps them healthy. So we need very little veterinary intervention. The more that we can use our natural systems to produce food, the more we can encourage that ecological balance. We allow the earth the opportunity to balance itself out, which is cheaper, as well as it having less of a climate impact. And for Charlotte's dad, this was a game changer. That year turned out to be the best in my farming career to date. I asked old Jim why. His answer was very simple. You put back more than you took away. I had no idea that was even possible, actually, that you could create a mix like that that would be so healthy for the animal.

9:03It's kind of incredible. I know. And it's so exciting what it can unlock. Like it puts so much more power in the hands of farmers because they're not dependent on these systems where they have to pay other people. And it's better for us to have a way of farming that strengthens the soil so that it's getting easier to grow food in the future, not harder. So this isn't just a piece of land to Arthur. No, exactly. It's a lifetime's work. And Arthur had Charlotte and Ben late in life when he was already in his 60s. So by the time the landlord was trying to kick them all out, Arthur was in his 80s.

9:34When you grow up at a farm, and especially for Dad, he'd put his heart and soul into the soil, into that land. So when someone that's not connected to it just comes with a lot of power, it's such a hard thing to come to terms with how that's even allowed and how that's even possible. So here we are in the early 2000s. Eviction notice served. Nowhere else to live. At the time, Charlotte was 21, just returning from university, and Ben was 19. Yeah, I mean, the farm pretty much was derelict because no money had been invested in it. The farmhouse was kind of crumbling and falling down. Most of the livestock had been sold to pay off all the legal fees.

10:14Ben and I went, actually, we don't want to leave either. Is there anything we can do? So where did that leave you? We thought the only way we could make this viable was to sell what we had direct to the public. We renovated a tiny little litro on the side of the farmhouse with a little secondhand chest freezer and a short order that said sausages for sale. And we made about 50 quid in the first weekend and thought we were rich. But suddenly when you're renting a 140 acre farm, it doesn't quite go as far as it used to. So we both got jobs off the farm to supplement the income. And they also did something that for a farmer was pretty radical.

10:49Yeah, for a profession known for the phrase, get off my land, they did exactly the opposite. bit. So we started with these volunteer weekends and then we started to hold events at the farm, anything we could think of to get the local community onto the farm. Hopefully for them to see it as an asset to the local area. What have you been doing Jack? I've been hitting posts. Why have you been hitting posts? And have you been cleaning chairs for us, Emmy? Thank you very much for that. We kind of kept sharing ideas and sharing the struggle and the plight and kind of going we don't want to lose it and asking the community for help which is not something farmers are very good at normally we do kind of keep everything quite close and and don't want to look like we're failures or that we need to ask for help but actually it was one of the most powerful things that we did.

11:41And that's where Charlotte saw what might just possibly save the farm. It was a month after dad sadly passed away at the age of 89 that We held quite a big community meeting. And we asked the local people what they wanted from the farm. The community said, look, we want it to stay. We want to be part of it. We want to be able to come and buy food from it. We want to be able to visit it. But we don't want to be farmers. And Ben was like, thank goodness, because I really want to be the farmer. And the concept of community ownership was born. This is very cool, like, that you get to save this farm but don't have to become a farmer yourself.

12:19Yeah. Matt you haven't met me but Matt will attest that like of all the things in the world probably being a farmer is the least likely thing that you would imagine we took Mariam on her first allotment ever on the podcast but you know what Mariam I think many of our members are similar so what happened next we then started to try and get an option to buy the farm from the landowners and they just kept saying no no no and eventually in the July of 2005 a couple of months before the end of our tenancy agreement they came to us and they said you can buy the farm by the 1st of july 2006 we'll give you first refusal if you come to us with 800 000 pound take it or leave it offer so technically they had a chance but they definitely didn't have 800 grand ben and i you know we were so young and we didn't really know what we were doing but we had nothing to lose and there was a lot of young naivety there that we were just like let's have a go this is like so huge this is like some kids trying to raise nearly a million pounds to save a farm I love that naivety of youth because I think it does you know we get older and like we started to think about all the things that won't work and sometimes either because you're young or because there are no other options you just do it seriously because you just we came in and just thought so if it's the right thing it must be possible so they got a plan to create a community-owned farm and the clock is ticking but while nowadays you can set up a legal structure for a community-owned project in about five minutes see our website if you want to do it yourself charlotte and ben were some of the first people in the uk to do this and it took them a painstaking six months for lack of six months to raise 800 thousand pound no way yeah we started to sell shares an affordable 50 quid a pop by the way and you know we'd raised about 33 000 pound and we still had four and a half months and this is where our young naivety was going i know it's going really great you know i've never seen 30 thousand pound in my life before so i was pretty excited a little shortcut for you here that's a whopping 4 % of the£800 ,000 they needed.

14:37Our board were understandably quite nervous and they were obviously doing the maths and they were going, oh Charlotte, you know, we need to move a little bit quicker. As the campaign started to grow, Charlotte and Ben carried on opening up the farm to more and more volunteers, now coming from all over the country. Where have you come from today, Christophe? I've come from London. To water the water. Oh, well done, just for that. And one of those volunteers got them connected to a national newspaper, which was a huge deal in pre-social media days. It was a full page of the weekend supplement, and it was another full page inside that.

15:13So you can imagine what phenomenal publicity that was. So much so that we had to install an extra phone line in the house to cope with the volume of calls that continued to come in for weeks after this article had come out. What are you doing for us, Steve? I'm doing envelopes and sending out chess forms for people. Give her some. Give her money to her. Money came in cheques, in an envelope, handwritten, with a handwritten application form through the post. Let's see how much post we've had today. We got an envelope that said, to the brother and sister saving their farm, England. And it got to us.

15:53That was on the address. And we were like, wow. Like, it felt like royalty. That's incredible. And then Sting sent a donation in because one of our volunteers went, no, I'm just going to write him a letter and ask. All I can think of is that people care from all around the world. Yeah, and they needed an easy way to show it. But I feel like there's another bit of magic here too, because taking problems like this to a wider group suddenly means you're not all alone. You feel supported. Exactly right. We'd be running into the bank just before five o 'clock each day before they clothed with our pile of checks.

16:28All the ladies behind the counter were like, where are you up to now? Are you getting there? So everyone felt part of the process. By this point, they were making real progress. But time was also seriously running out and with two weeks to go, they still had to raise a staggering quarter of a million pounds. Ben's getting petrified, he's kind of going, Charlotte, we need to apply for council housing, we've got nowhere to live in the next two months, what's going to happen? There was one farmer actually that came up to me in the last couple of weeks. He was quite a big landowner and he said, oh, you know, I've seen what you're doing.

17:04It's a little bit, you know, hippie, different, you know, so you won't raise that amount of money in the time you've got left. I said, how do you know that? And he said, you just won't, it's not possible. And I was like, how can something not be possible? It might not be likely, but it's not the same as not possible. Oh my gosh, when I came home, I was like, we're going to make this work if there's no more reason than to prove that wrong and wrong. I love that story because I'm also very stubborn, so it really speaks to me. But also, you know, when I listen to it, I think what's so fascinating about the mindset we've been tricked into is you were going to lose the farm anyway.

17:48Why not try? Exactly. I think a real key message in that is to kind of just try things out. And we need to be not afraid to fail. It's the 15th of June. It's 16 days to go. And here, bring midnight oil. In the videos Charlotte recorded of those fundraising days, there is an energy and an enthusiasm that is starting to feel familiar in this series. It says, never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. indeed it's the only thing it ever has that's why we're here

18:25actually when you empower us as a community to create our own solutions magic happens we become resourceful we become creative and we find solutions where solutions might not have existed before

18:43I love this so much because we're so often told that it's like one hero that saves everyone, but actually it's often lots of people coming together that makes a difference. And it's being able to go that extra mile when you know other people have got your back. It's so much more reassuring, but it's also a lot more fun. So now there's one week to go. How much do you think of Grace? Through the coast. Shit! Oh my God! 712 ,000. 712 ,000. 876 pounds 33p. The total keeps creeping closer to 800 ,000 pounds, but it's down to the literal wire. BBC Breakfast News had picked up the story. They said, and on the deadline, Charlotte, we'd like to come and announce the result, whatever happens.

19:39And we were like, OK. And all week we'd be telling our shareholders, we're on the deadline, dang, whatever happens, watch breakfast television because they're going to announce it. But it was only the day before our deadline in 2006 that we got confirmation from the bank that we had the£800 ,000 there. Wow, that's amazing. Toast to Arthur! Yeah. Toast to Arthur! Toast to Arthur! Toast to Arthur! Well, you know you are. Well, I've done you.

20:10And we actually did three live broadcasts before nine o 'clock on breakfast television. And there was me and Ben and mom and a whole group of volunteers with glasses and champagne.

20:23I mean, it's like a movie. It's amazing. And it's so, it's just so emotional to hear it. I can only imagine how emotional it must have been for you. I'm curious to know whether, you know, you're so busy just doing, whether afterwards there was just like a wave of it hitting you. I'll tell you what happened after we went into media ownership, and I'll try not to swear, but I went, oh, we've actually got to do this now. So they did it. I mean, I can't believe it. It's amazing. But what does this mean? Well, the 8 ,000 owners of Ford Hall rent the land to Charlotte's brother Ben on a 100-year lease with succession rights, which means the farm will stay in the family and Ben can run his own business from the land.

21:04He lives in the farmhouse, he's invested in the soil, he's got his business, he operates the farm shop which has just won by the way a Golden Fork Award for Sustainability which is an international award as well which we're extremely excited about and that's because of dad's legacy. When I visited Ford Hall earlier this year I met Ben and it was clear what a difference this management structure has made to him as a farmer. A long-term tenancy means we've got the confidence to be able to invest in the business, to invest in the farm. And when we're farming here, we treat the farm as if it's our own.

21:38And I suppose the second big thing, which is great for me as a farmer and as a tenant, is to know that our landlord's a friendly landlord. They're not just after the highest rent every year, but they're looking at the work that you're doing and the way you're maintaining the land. And it's nice to know that they want you to carry on, and they're looking forward to us doing a good job as well. So that's a great model for farmers but what about the 8 ,000 community shareholders? As a community owned organisation we do school visits we have residential visits a care farm which supports adults with learning disabilities a youth project supporting vulnerable young people we have free public access to the farm to come and visit and go for a walk around we have yurts for glamping and all these things are run by the community landlord I've stayed in that yurt You have?

22:24Yes! Put my kids, that's amazing And collectively, you know, on 128 acres, we're employing over 100 local people on a very extensive pasture-based farm, which normally wouldn't be able to support more than one to one and a half people. And that's one of these amazing opportunities for community ownership. It's not just a nice thing to do. It can hold real economic value and resilience as much as it can from a nature, climate and community and social perspective. Obviously, from an operational day-to-day point of view, we're not going to 8 ,000 people saying, do we need to order toilet roll today?

23:02And, you know, operational decisions are kind of devolved down to the management team and the staff on the ground. But each year, each member gets a vote at our AGM and they can put themselves forward to be on our board of directors, which is a volunteer board if they want to. And that is actually a lot of where the magic happens. Earlier this year, I jumped in my car and went to see what exactly an AGM, an annual general meeting, of a farm owned by 8 ,000 people is like. Thank you to everybody that has come today. You're all so lovely. Just having a massive extended family. And what excites you about what's happening here?

23:44I have big dreams for what can happen next for Ford Hall. We were supporters right from the beginning. It's still developing and getting better all the time. You know, we're about to approach 20 years into community ownership and our shareholders say they feel more engaged now than they did when they first bought their share. There's something we need to talk about here because actually, I think that we are all really afraid of the idea of big groups of people trying to make decisions. Like, that just feels like a recipe for disaster, no? Yeah, we all have this innate reaction that it's messy or inefficient.

24:18This AGM was great. Like, everyone was engaged, people made decisions, it all happened on time. And why do you think that is? I think, yeah, they have a really clear vision of what they're trying to do, and so that means everyone coming knows what they're feeding into. It's a much more resilient way of running something. Yeah, and it's fun and it's exciting. Like, it's such a creative group of people. There are so many ideas, and it's a two-way street. I think it just continues to maybe think that so much of this is just about belonging. Yeah, and doing things together. Yeah, and doing things together and being made to feel like you're part of something.

24:54And I would say this year, one conversation dominated. We're going to start the discussion with you guys. How do we support other farms? Do you know what, funnily enough, I was reading the first newsletter that we sent out after we put Ford Hall in community ownership. so this was sent out in like September October time 2006 and it said something like wouldn't it be amazing if everyone part owned their farm next door now we're in a position to actually start having some of those conversations so we're thinking very deeply at the moment as to how and if we should expand what we've got here at Ford or outside the farm gate to other places across the country and what does that look like what does that support look like how can we coach mentor and support others on their journey so that Fordall isn't just one little piece of magic in Shropshire but it's sparking off lots of other pieces of magic right across the country.

25:52So that takes us to a week ago and Charlotte texted me to say something exciting is about to happen but not in Shropshire, in Devon. What the anticipation, tell us. So I dropped all my exciting Saturday night plans. Okay, you have two kids. And headed down to West Town Farm just outside Exeter into a barn full of very excited locals. Welcome everyone, incredible to see so many people here, thank you so much for coming. My name is Andy Bragg, I am the owner of the farm, so the ownership of West Ham Farm is going to change. I'm going to give the farm to Ford Hall Community Land Initiative. It's going to become a community farm.

26:41Do you know what? I don't get emotional. And I feel like it's the second time this week I might actually get emotional. So I'm going to try not to. Wait a second. What just happened? Andy just gave his farm to Fortor. OK, you're going to have to tell me a bit more about this. Well, he wanted to know that it had some future and it was going to be looked after. So he's given it to them. I mean, when I first heard this, I got emotional. I can imagine. I mean, isn't this exactly the point? Which is that what they were doing could inspire other people. Totally. Andy came to me a year ago and was in a position of kind of, doesn't have children to pass on his organic farm.

27:18He wants it to stay organic, he wants to retire, he wants to safeguard those jobs and those livelihoods on the land, but knows if he puts it on the open market, it's likely to be swallowed up by some investor or a pension fund. And as for Andy's hopes for the farm... It can become a force for good, and in that force for good that everyone's part of, it can be secured for a generation. That's a real dream and I've only just made that up. It's sounding cool, isn't it? There's no reason why, you know, everyone in here can part-own West Ham.