Collaborative Landscape Initiatives by England’s Upland Farmers Workshop Summary: ORFC 9th January 2025
The Foundation for Common Land convened a Collaborative Practices Workshop at the 2025 Oxford Real Farming Conference. We covered key aspects of collaboration in upland farming to multiple outcomes deliver at landscape scale.
After an introduction by Julia Aglionby to the Foundation for Common Land’s work on fostering collaboration through ‘Our Upland Commons’ we heard from two amazing Farmer Led Clusters: John Dracup explained how the Central Dartmoor Farmers Cluster has grown and now is developing a major Landscape Recovery scheme. Jane Lane shared the work of the Orton Fells Cluster in Cumbria and their work to develop financing for public goods via a Natural Environment Investment Readiness Grant (NEIRF).
There were 40 people participating in the workshop and after the talks all gathered around four tables and through facilitated structured conversations shared and discussed the key areas to foster collaboration for delivering in England’s Uplands.
Here’s a summary of the key points from the group conversations:
1. Why Collaborate?
Collaboration helps address isolation, builds trust, pools expertise, and creates stronger support networks. It encourages new perspectives, shared costs, mutual support, and enhances resilience through collective action at a landscape scale. Collaboration fosters creativity, joy, and strengthens communities and enables farmers to collectively address the significant challenges from the transition from BPS to ELM. Collaboration enables more effective delivery at scale. One farm is a small piece of a natural jigsaw.
2. How to Create Trust
Building trust is a challenge requiring open communication, restorative practices, active listening, and creating the right environment for safe conversations. It’s important to be honest, fair, and respect differences, while developing shared goals over time. Placing people first and finding common causes to tackle helps build trust, time is required and power dynamics recognised.
3. Who Facilitates Collaboration?
There is a difference between a facilitator, a coordinator and a chair of a group. What is required depends on the context. A facilitator can be someone external or internal with the right skills to guide the group. There is usually extensive paperwork and co-ordination required They can be internal with a stake in the project though this can result in conflicts of interest. External facilitators may have no stake in the subject but will require a willingness to understand and learn about the farming context. Their role is to ensure the group works effectively, with impartiality, and without forcing an agenda. Specialist facilitation can be undertaken by professional farming advisors and land agents. Facilitators benefit from training to create stronger communities and networks to support collaborative efforts between farms and commons.
4. Collaborative Data Collection
Citizen science can build trust and awareness while enabling shared language and responsibility. Technology and apps can be used for data collection, but the goals and methodology should be clear and training provided. Ownership and privacy must be respected, and data should be standardized and consistent. Valuable to value all biodiversity not simply the rare species and working together builds enthusiasm and ownership of nature on farms in addition to identity as food producers.
5. Financing Collective Delivery and Management
Self-driven motivation and seed funding (e.g., FiPL) are important for sustaining collaboration. There are concerns about government support and risks related to funding, requiring farmers to plan finances carefully. Farmers need clarity on financing models and more formal structures to enhance sustainability.
Overall, the workshop emphasized the power of collaboration to overcome challenges, create stronger communities, and support farming businesses to deliver more for nature, climate and communities.