Meet the Sandy community: Michael Kavanagh, Church Farm
We meet Shropshire farmer and founder of the Green Farm Collective, Michael Kavanagh, to hear about his experience of using Sandy in a regenerative farming system. To find out about how Sandy can help you take control and capture the full value of your natural capital, request a demo below.
Rethinking sustainable farming
Michael Kavanagh is a first-generation farmer from Shropshire. When he came to Church Farm eight years ago, he set out to create a sustainable and profitable business using regenerative farming principles.
After starting out using a strip-till system, Michael became interested in soil health which led to him considering how he could farm sustainably without using off-the-shelf chemicals. He realised that there was another way to farm as opposed to the conventional practices he’d always followed.
The farm now follows a zero-till system; insecticides and plant growth regulators are no longer being used and in the last two years only one fungicide has been used across the entire farm. Michael says Church Farm is really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with on-farm changes also including zero use of P & K bagged fertiliser.
Farm facts
730 ha in Shropshire
700 Lleyn X ewes – outdoor reared, grass-fed and sold to a local farm shop
Cultivation technique: zero-till
Part of the Green Farm Collective
Growing wheat, malting barley oilseed rape, beans, quinoa and heritage wheat
First farmer to sell carbon using Trinity Natural Capital Markets
What practices have you implemented on-farm to reduce your carbon impact?
“Implementing a zero till system is a big one. By not moving the soil, we are keeping all the carbon locked in, with no impact on yields. However, it’s important to note that if the ground isn’t ready for no-till then you won’t see the same results. For example, on a large area of new land we have stepped back to strip till because the land is simply not ready for a zero till system.
“We’ve also minimised our fuel usage as a result of zero till. During drilling, we’ve been using around five litres of fuel per hectare which is a miniscule amount for on-farm work.
“Nitrogen use efficiency has been hugely improved through the work we have been doing on farm. Nitrogen is one of the biggest killers on your carbon calculations so being able to improve the efficiency of this has been a great achievement. We’ve also extended our rotation and included cover crops into our rotation which has also demonstrated huge benefits.”
Why did you choose Trinity AgTech?
“As part of the Green Farm Collective, we were looking for a partner to be able to quantify what we were doing. We knew we were doing the right things on-farm, in terms of carbon and biodiversity, but how do you quantify that.
“We explored various options and Trinity AgTech had the best understanding of the practices we’d adopted and the most robust science and analytics in Sandy.
“The agriculture sector is in pioneering times at the moment and there is going to be a lot of change in the next five years, so it was important to find a navigator we could rely on and trust.
“Sandy’s scenario planning aspect was a huge selling point. As time goes on and we get a better idea of the value of natural capital, the scenario planning tool will definitely become an integral part of our planning.
“Trinity Natural Capital Markets also gave us the confidence that we were protected and complying with legalities around trading, which is something I was keen to do”.
“Trinity AgTech had the best understanding of the practices we’d adopted and the most robust science and analytics in Sandy.”
Michael Kavanagh
Farm Manager, Church Farm
What is your long-term vision?
“For me, a key vision is using Sandy in conjunction with Natural Capital Markets to enable us, as the Green Farm Collective, to trade natural capital in a fair and efficient manner. That is massively important to us because on-farm financial margins have never been so under scrutiny.
“Not only that, Sandy will also support us at farm level to ensure we are producing as much food as we can but in the most sustainable way possible.”