Knitson Farm

19/08/2026

11/08/2026

Natural England now agrees with the people who actually manage the moor.

In a new blog, it accepts that reducing vegetation fuel through grazing, cutting and firebreaks is essential to preventing wildfire. For years, that has been our argument: a moor is kept safe by skilled people working it season after season, not by leaving it alone.

Stopping a fire before it takes hold is safer, cheaper and far less damaging than fighting one after it spreads. Natural England's own reserves are managed exactly this way.

So here's the honest question: if active management is right on Natural England's land, why do its licences and access rules still hold up the same work everywhere else?

Read the full article — link in the comments:

04/08/2026

THE FUTURE OF FARMING, CANCELLED BY THE PAST.

Seven years ago, Rotterdam opened the world’s first floating dairy farm.
A three storey farm in the middle of a city harbour, producing food close to consumers, using solar power and feeding cows partly on useful by-products from nearby businesses that might otherwise have gone to waste.

It reduced food miles, reused urban waste and demonstrated how food production could continue where land is scarce and flooding is an increasing risk.

In other words, it was exactly the type of circular and sustainable farming system politicians constantly tell us they want.

It was impressive enough for Jeremy Clarkson and Kaleb Cooper to visit during the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm, where it was presented as an example of how agriculture could modernise and adapt.

Now it is being put up for sale.

Its current permit expires this month. Its Rotterdam harbour site is being redeveloped for housing, its lease is not expected to continue and no workable alternative location has been secured.

The owners say outdated regulations and environmental bureaucracy have left them with no viable route forward.

There is some nuance here. The site was never guaranteed to remain available forever and Rotterdam clearly needs housing.

But that does not erase the absurdity.

Farmers are constantly told to:
Reduce food miles.
Reuse waste.
Produce food closer to consumers.
Adapt to climate change.
Use less land.
Modernise.
Become more sustainable.
These people did all of it.

They invested millions, proved the concept, attracted international interest and turned political slogans into an actual working farm.

Yet when it came to helping that farm survive, the system found deadlines, departments and reasons why it could not be done.

We are very good at praising innovation while it remains a pilot project.

We are far less capable of allowing it to become permanent.

This is not simply the loss of 30 cows on a floating platform in Rotterdam.

It is a warning about what happens when regulation stops managing genuine risk and begins suffocating the very solutions it was supposedly designed to encourage.

If the future of farming can be imagined, financed, built and proven, but still cannot survive the bureaucracy, then the problem is not a shortage of innovation.

The problem is the system.

27/07/2026

This is why we have to back our British beef farmers and buy local 🥩 🇬🇧

12/06/2026

Did you know that this year the Home Office moved to stop expert sheep shearers from Australia and New Zealand coming to shear British sheep.

The people who keep the animals comfortable were declared surplus to requirements.

For over a decade, around 75 of the best shearers on earth have flown in each spring on a simple visa concession.

In a few brutal weeks they take the wool off up to two million sheep.

A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes.

Hundreds a day. In calm hands with no panic in the animal.

It is a global trade and a young body's game and Britain has never grown enough of its own.

The official line? Fourteen years to train Britons, so the door is closing.

Most sheep must be shorn every year or she overheats, cannot move properly, and gets eaten alive by flies and maggots. Shearing on time is welfare, plain and simple, written into law and into the animal's own skin.

We have a system that lectures farmers without pause about welfare whilst making the most basic welfare task harder to carry out.

After the outcry they allowed one "final" year. Then the experts are gone for good.

A sector already losing money on every fleece, already burning wool it cannot sell, now told it cannot even get the people in to take the wool off.

You could be forgiven for thinking somebody wants the British sheep gone?

05/06/2026

Where do you even begin to start with nonsense like this?

Seriously Sainsbury's, who are you trying to convince that this is an actual thing?

The idea that white eggs automatically have a lower carbon footprint is ...well..I'll try to explain why it's a daft theory.

White egg laying birds such as White Stars and Amberlines may eat slightly less and they do lay well. That part is true.

However, they are not exactly the calmest creatures in the poultry world. They are flighty, nervous and very easily stressed. In fact, White Stars in particular have a bit of a reputation for suddenly dying when they get overexcited or startled!!

Which is not ideal when your grand environmental strategy appears to be resting on a hen that can be taken out by a strong sneeze.

There is also the issue of productive life.
In commercial systems, white egg layers often have a shorter laying life than brown egg layers such as ISA Browns, Bovans and Lohmann Browns.

So yes, they may eat a bit less feed.

However, if birds need replacing sooner, that means more chicks being incubated, more pullets being reared, more heat, more electricity, more gas, more transport and more cost.

That all has a footprint too.

People who actually know poultry will tell you that these birds are bred to lay hard.

Very hard.

White Stars are slender birds, they do not eat a lot and the pressure of laying at that rate can take a real toll on them.

So forgive me if I do not immediately accept the idea that this is all being done for the planet.

It looks far more like a supermarket buying decision dressed up as an environmental one.

If Sainsbury’s wants to sell white eggs because they suit the supply chain, improve margins or fit the system better, then just say that.

Just do not dress it up as some grand net zero breakthrough while ignoring the reality of the birds themselves.

If supermarkets want to talk seriously about farming, food and welfare, they could start by listening to the people who actually understand hens.

Just a thought!!

03/05/2026

🥛 A daily glass of milk could cut bowel cancer risk by a fifth, according to a major 2025 study by University of Oxford, funded by Cancer Research UK Here's why that matters:

✅ Just 1 glass a day linked to a 20% lower risk of bowel cancer
✅ Calcium in milk plays a key role in gut health
✅ Study adds to growing evidence supporting dairy in a healthy diet
https://ow.ly/fafj50W51hv

Behind every healthy glass of milk is a healthy cow — and behind that? The hardworking UK dairy farmers keeping their herds in top condition.

02/05/2026

“Because dead, dying, or sick is a loss in profits. The care is given for the profits when the animal is slaughtered, not for any altruistic reason.”

I understand why it might look that way from the outside, but that’s really not an accurate picture of how most of us farm.

Yes, this is our livelihood—but care doesn’t just show up at the end. It’s every single day. Healthy animals don’t happen by accident. They come from consistent feeding, clean environments, attention to health, and actually knowing your animals well enough to notice when something isn’t right. That’s not a last-minute decision for profit—that’s daily responsibility.

And the truth is, poor care creates more problems than it solves. Sick animals don’t just mean less profit—they mean more time, more resources, more stress, and setbacks that can impact the entire farm. Good care isn’t optional—it’s the foundation of everything we do.

But beyond that, it’s not just about money. Even though we raise our cows for beef, that doesn’t mean we don’t love and care for them. We spend our days with them. We know their behaviors, their personalities, and we take pride in raising them right. They matter to us in a way that goes far beyond a paycheck.

You can acknowledge that farming is a business while also recognizing that there’s real care, respect, and responsibility behind it. For most of us, it’s never been ‘just about profit.’ It’s about doing right by the animals that depend on us every single day.

01/05/2026

🔥 The Dangerous Myth of 'Passive' Prevention: Why True Nature-Based Solutions Require Active Stewardship

Without fuel, there are no fires.

Yet UK policy is allowing massive corridors of overgrown vegetation - "Fire Highways" - to dominate our uplands.

Peer-reviewed data shows that removing active management causes wildfire fuel loads to increase four to six-fold within just 15–20 years. The result is a direct shift from small fires that can be safely controlled to megafires that cannot be suppressed.

The EFRA Committee is now asking what role nature-based solutions should play in wildfire prevention. The honest answer: NBS only work when guided by human hands.

Passive rewilding is not a solution - it is a recipe for disaster. True nature-based solutions in the UK uplands require active stewardship: controlled winter burning, targeted grazing, and vegetation cutting.

Even rewetting alone is not enough. The recent blaze at Danes Moss burned through 2,500 square metres of a fundamentally wet lowland bog because the unmanaged surface vegetation had dried out and ignited.

Firefighting must be the last resort. Active management is the solution.

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