Yesterday Ian Wilkinson spoke at the National Trust’s Food & Farming Plenary on ‘The forage plants that work for pollinators and soil’. The annual Plenary, which took place over three days at the Holnicote Estate in Somerset, gathered together the National Trust’s farming and food advisors with other presentations covering food strategy and sourcing from farms and estates, alongside site visits to look at land and flood management.

The National Trust states that as an organisation it is ‘committed to the long-term health of the land and the environment’ and looks to ‘find new ways to be good stewards of the land, passing it on in good condition for future generations’. This is a view that is shared by Cotswold Seeds, which supplies farmers with a range of grass seed mixtures such as herbal leys and green manures designed to improve the organic matter in the soil and mine it for minerals.

‘It was an honour to be invited to the National Trust’s Plenary to talk on the important subject of farming and food,’ says Ian Wilkinson. ‘‘The mineral content of the soil has been seriously depleted over the past decades, affecting the goodness of vegetables, fruit, meat and milk, so the link between farming to produce healthy soil which enters the food chain and produces healthy food is becoming increasingly important.’