2023 AGM report
Do you know the carbon value of your orchards? The second part of the James Nichols Lecture given by Emily Norton, (former head of research at Savills) at this year’s AGM, posed a very interesting question for growers on the carbon value of the trees they grow. “When you plant an orchard do you register the carbon in the trees? It should be the ultimate cobenefit for what you are doing. Globally, permaculture and what you guys are doing is of real interest to investors because of the carbon you can store in trees as well as the co-benefit of the healthy apples or whatever fruit you are producing. We haven’t really woken up to this yet, that there is a massive opportunity to have that co-benefit to the long legacy of tenanted land, as you can only profit from these markets for eco services if you have long term control and tenure of these particular issues. Which is why this idea of environmental governance and natural capital, (who owns it and who needs to look after it for long term benefit, who needs to be incentivised either with carrot or stick to make sure we are improving all of these indicators for well-being which the government is now selling for land, all of those long term targets and there are so many of them, so what are we doing and the piece around how tenants are being incentivised around eco service markets) is really important as government wants this to happen. Government wants private markets propping up a vital, diversified income stream for farms. If you haven’t got control of those eco system services because of the structure of your business, we are going to get some interesting ripples in the system.
I listened to a talk about land values going up, rents going up and tenants being excluded from these markets, and you can’t have all three of those things. If land values, go up and tenants are excluded from the markets then rents need to come down. Alternatively, if you want tenants to be delivering the eco systems services then the rents might go up. There is a false market expectation at the moment, and everyone is running towards this opportunity for carbon and eco systems services for water mitigation for whatever it might be and pricing it into the system and there is a huge amount of investor interest in our sector at the moment. So, if your heart is not in this sector and I hear about grubbing up and it’s a tragedy, but there are people out there who will be willing to buy your farm and will probably plant trees on it. Maybe we need to have more of a managed exit for those people whose hearts aren’t in it. Net zero and the regenerative transition, this is the thing I think will be most disruptive. I sat through two events in London (April) both really looking at banks who are financing what is perceived to be a regenerative transition for agriculture. The thing about regenerative farming (and I hope you are all familiar with this term, this buzzword and how trendy it is at the moment) is that I hear you say you are grubbing up orchards, but an awful lot of arable farmers are putting trees in and fruit trees as well and they need your skills and expertise to work out what on earth they need to do with these things.
British Royal Gala apples being harvested at AC Goatham & Son in Kent 80
