From crop rotation to ‘mob-grazed’ livestock: Inside the sustainable farm beloved by King Charles III

When King Charles III visited Honeydale Farm in England’s Cotswolds region, one of his first remarks was: “Monoculture. That’s our problem.”

That’s the recollection of the farm’s owner Ian Wilkinson, as he walked down its drive with the then Prince Charles almost four years ago.

“And I nodded, and thought: ‘well, absolutely,'” Wilkinson told CNBC via video call.

Monoculture refers to the common practice of growing a single crop on a piece of land, sometimes year after year. Crops are grown in this way for efficiency, but critics say doing so depletes soil nutrients and increases the risk of disease.

The king — a longtime supporter of organic farming — visited Honeydale to learn about its focus on growing a wide variety of plants, a technique that aims to regenerate the soil.

Wilkinson studied agriculture in the 1970s when monoculture was encouraged after a post-World War II drive for the U.K. to import less food and become more self-sufficient.

“We were trained to produce more food and do it cheaply — and we didn’t have much regard for the environment, for nature,” Wilkinson said. Farmers relied on fertilizers made from petrochemicals, he added, and today, only around 3% of agricultural land in the U.K. is farmed organically, according to the most recent government statistics.

A long career at the Cotswold Seed Company, which supplies farms with seeds for wildflowers, grasses and root crops, meant Wilkinson heard from a lot of farmers, some of whom emphasized the need for self-sufficiency and for a diverse range of crops.

Wilkinson and his wife Celene bought the 107-acre Honeydale in 2013, and turned it into a demonstration farm — known as FarmED — that would explore how agriculture could be regenerative, rather than depleting the land.

When they bought it, cereal crops and grassland made up most of the farm, and the Wilkinsons introduced lambs and a wildflower area and planted 20,000 trees for birds to nest in. The farm’s orchard grows heritage apple varieties including one named “Blenheim Orange,” which dates back to around 1740. FarmED has also put in a natural flood management scheme. The farm sits in the Evenlode Valley, where the River Evenlode floods regularly, and the new scheme collects rainwater in a series of ponds connected by channels, aiming to prevent flooding.

“An over-extractive system in terms of soil health is a big problem,” Wilkinson told CNBC. “And soil health, of course, is linked to water quality and to pollution,” he said. Soil also sequesters — or stores — carbon, and in 2023 the British government noted that “intensive agriculture has caused arable soils to lose about 40 to 60% of their organic carbon.”

“We need to evolve into the next iteration of farming, still producing enough food for … a growing world population, but to do it in a way that is not so extractive and actually rebuilds the natural systems,” Wilkinson said.

To that end, FarmED, a nonprofit, is “rebuilding” the soil on the farm by focusing on a crop rotation using what’s known as a herbal ley, a mix of herbs, grasses and clovers that add nitrogen — a natural fertilizer — to the soil. A herb like chicory has long roots that can “mine” the soil for minerals, improving its health, while a grass like cocksfoot is drought resistant.

Heritage wheat and rye are grown over an eight-year rotation that uses no artificial fertilizers or sprays, and are compared to a “control” plot of wheat that is farmed in a traditional way — which does use artificial fertilizer — so FarmED can measure the health of the soil versus the regenerative plots. There are indications that the soil has been regenerated, with an improved structure and more earthworms, Wilkinson said.

The ley is “managed” by livestock using a method called “mob-grazing,” where several animals graze a different, small, area of land each day. In doing so, they trample some of the plants back into the soil, creating a natural fertilizer along with their manure.

The method also means no single plant becomes dominant, which improves diversity, and once the soil’s fertility has improved over four years, wheat and oats are grown on the land.

Around 20% of FarmED’s visitors are farmers, some of whom have added herbal leys to their farms, while other visitors come from the food or related industries, or are members of the public. People can attend talks on topics such as beekeeping, foraging and woodworking, while a forthcoming session is titled “Goats for beginners.”

Wilkinson said people from different backgrounds visit, including those from pesticide companies or those who “feel really strongly about the world.” “Some companies are trying to figure out what regenerative agriculture means to them,” Wilkinson said.

“We simply say we’re not here to judge. We just know that agriculture has to move to the next era,” he said.