For those fond of wearing cut-off denim shorts with Wellington boots, the end of June in England means one of two things. Either you are heading to Glastonbury with 140,000 other revellers, or you are on your way to Groundswell, the regenerative farming festival in Hertfordshire, now dubbed — with only mild irony — the Glasto of farming.
This year is a fallow summer for Glastonbury. Groundswell, meanwhile, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. From a modest gathering of 450 farmers discussing no-till agriculture in a shed, Groundswell has grown to a world-famous convening of the agri-ecologically curious. Among last year’s 10,500 visitors were government officials, corporate sustainability teams and The Prince of Wales, all treated to artisanal food pop ups, wellbeing workshops and live music alongside discussions on hedgerow management and soil health. Its wide ranging appeal means a number of Glastonbury attendees can also be found dancing here, not least Andy Cato, co-founder of farm-to-plate food business Wildfarmed and one half of Groove Armada, who DJs at both festivals, sometimes just 24 hours apart.
Slickly produced and Instagram ready, this blurring of genres shows how far the farming festival has travelled from its country-show roots. But when tickets are snapped up by punters and corporations who wouldn’t know a plough share from a power harrow, does this risk driving away the very people they are supposed to be for?
'But perhaps this is exactly the point: if a bridge needs building between an urban population disconnected from the land and those who grow their food, watching a white-coated judge praise the defined rump of a British Blue is unlikely to do it'
'Bee whisperer' Matt Somerville (below) shows off some of his log hives.
The agricultural show is one of Britain’s oldest social happenings, proliferating in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a mechanism for disseminating new farming techniques, science and practice. Its foundational assumption was that the farmer was the focus. While 39% of visitors to the Royal Welsh Show have no connection with agriculture, no one is in any doubt whose world they were in, and who the show is for.
That world has contracted. When the first Royal Show took place in 1839, agriculture was the largest single employer in Britain. By the time it held its last outing in 2009 after 170 years, with breaks only for war and foot-and-mouth, visitors, which once included Elizabeth II and the Prime Minister, had dropped from a quarter of a million to 120,000. It closed not because farming had lost its audience, but because the farming community had become too small to make the economics workable.
In choosing to launch the inaugural ‘Great British Farm Fest’ on the same site in Warwickshire’s Stoneleigh Park this May, Jeremy Clarkson was making a point. Farming is back, but this time — as their website declared — it is ‘rock and roll farming’. Some 52,000 spectators came over three days. Whereas visitors to The Royal Show applauded rosette-winning farmers for specimen cattle and champion sheep, leading some to call it ‘the FA Cup for livestock’, Farm Fest offered tractors pulling apart a car, lookalike competitions for TV farm-star Kaleb Cooper and an orchestra playing music on vegetables drilled and chiselled into edible penny whistles.
But perhaps this is exactly the point: if a bridge needs building between an urban population disconnected from the land and those who grow their food, watching a white-coated judge praise the defined rump of a British Blue is unlikely to do it. Celebrity chefs cooking demonstrations and the chance to feed goats sticking their heads through a wooden windmill might.
Jeremy Clarkson's Farm has propelled farming into the public spotlight, and his Great British Farm Fest is on the site of the former Royal Agricultural Show.
What is not in doubt is that farming could use all the PR it can get. Average farm income across all types fell by almost 50% in in 2023/4. Cereal farms were hit hardest, with a 73% drop. There have been six Secretary of States at DEFRA in as many years. In the last year alone, the Government abolished the Sustainable Farming Incentive payment scheme without warning, reintroduced it with a cap, and announced inheritance tax changes so inflammatory that scenes of tractors blocking Parliament Square in protest have become commonplace. The boom in farming festivals in this context feels less entertainment and more a call to arms. The message for moral support appears to be getting through where pleas for financial support have failed. One in 10 people in the UK now visit a farming show each year. In 2023, record attendances were driven largely by non-farmers. But while aerial displays and Shetland Pony Races may be crowd pleasers, can these modern kinds of farming festivals keep sufficient space for their original purpose?
‘We have always said Groundswell is for farmers, by farmers’ says Alex Cherry, event director and son of co-founder Paul. Even so, fewer than half of last years’ Groundswell attendees were farm owners. This year the festival is offering a discounted farmer ticket in recognition of the sector’s financial challenges and Cherry is clear the programming is always conceived ‘thinking about the farmer in the room — we don’t want it to be dumbed down’. Sessions have, however, been diversified, ranging across fibre and flower growing, and policy and supply chain discussions to one of the most popular panels last year: the challenge of maintaining a marriage while running a family farm.
Cherry’s theory as to why the festival appeals to audiences outside agriculture has less to do with boujee burger offerings, and more about the underlying themes. Most of his London friendship group once thought him mad to return to the land. ‘Now they ring me up wanting to get out of the city, to get their hands dirty’ Cherry says. ‘This way of farming offers meaning in a world that can feel disconnected and dystopian.’ In both its aesthetic and its ethos, it is easy to see how Groundswell appeals to a disillusioned millennial hot-desker from Hackney.
How does Cherry respond to those who feel the proliferation of urbanites and corporates has changed the festivals’ character? ‘I now don’t worry about it’ Cherry says. ‘We do very little sponsorship — we have six festival partners, some of whom pay nothing. Our funding relies on ticket sales and exhibitors’ revenue. We are totally independent’. He is aware of the warning offered by the music festival world, where the majority of the 600 festivals taking place each year are now owned by a handful of mega-companies: ‘As soon as a festival comes into ownership run by someone in the events industry, it loses its soul.'
'The view from the Groundswell DJ booth is, says Cato, "pretty wild — farmers definitely know how to party"'
At Groundswell, crowds are just as keen to hear about new farming practices as they are to dance to a DJ set from Andy Cato.
An example of one farming festival which has done exactly this is the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Begun as a fringe protest of 50 people in conscious opposition to the Oxford Farming Conference — the established, industry-aligned annual gathering held in the same town on the same dates — it has grown to a global gathering of nearly 5,000 with a range of ecologically minded discussions interspersed by music, book readings, film screenings, speed dating and morning meditation sessions.
However, despite government and business making sharp pivots towards sustainable farming in the last few years, it will not share its platform with the organisations it was set up to oppose. Some find this obstinacy reassuring. Others find it limiting. But the festivals’ identity and purpose remains clear, to both those who attend and those who don’t.
This sharing of a collective cause is the magic ingredient that seems to keep farmers at the centre of a festival, maintaining the balance between education and entertainment. Rachel Hall of Gutchpool Farm in Dorset, who attended the first Groundswell, says she comes back each year because ‘there are always interesting people to find and listen to’. This crosses not just ages but nationalities. This year Hall is attending a Groundswell reunion with fellow nominees for a Top 50 Farmer in Europe Award, representing 26 countries.
Cato has become an unlikely barometer of where the farming and music festival worlds intersect. He is clear about the difference between a festival for farmers and one about farming. The first is essentially a work event; the second a social one. Even so, the view from the Groundswell DJ booth is, says Cato, ‘pretty wild — farmers definitely know how to party’. As someone who has played to audiences of tens of thousands, he’s in the position to judge. But there is, thinks Cato, something special about his Groundswell set which comes down to a shared purpose: everyone has spent the day discussing how to better steward land and knows what is at stake. Dancing together seems to seal this mission: it is, says Cato, ‘a lovely moment of unity’.
In Groundswell’s wake, others are now swimming. From Cumbria to Jersey, there are now more regenerative farming festivals than months in the year. Most are squarely aimed at farmers. Others, such as ARK Summit on Steven Winward’s Gloucestershire farm, are also stepping into the middle ground with policy debates alongside breathwork sessions, a pilgrimage walk and lunch cooked over open fire by The Bushfire Camp.
Philip Larkin, watching the Bellingham Show in 1973, saw in its annual gathering as something more than livestock and produce competitions: a whole community briefly visible to itself, before dispersing back into the countryside it had come from. This summer may bring more curious Glastonbury revellers than ever to Groundswell’s fields. As long as the farmers in the tent still feel the purpose is to learn and share as well as celebrate and showcase, farming festivals will continue to thrive in their modern interpretation of the agricultural show.
If they do, their farmer fan base will continue to agree with the final line of Larkin’s Show Saturday. ‘Let it always be there’.
