What led you to make changes on your farm?

I’ve always been a bit absentee from my farm. I lived in Brazil, I lived in America and the farm was run very conventionally by very decent, conventional people. But I came to realise about 10 years ago that the conventional way of farming was leading into an environmental cul-de-sac. If you have a twin crop rotation repeatedly going from oil seed rape to wheat, oil seed rape to wheat, effectively it’s all take and no give, and life is not like that. 

Life is a balance of “give and take”.

One day, I was showing a friend of mine from Australia, Tony Lovell, around the farm. We were walking through a field of wheat, and I pointed out the blackgrass, saying that it was becoming a big problem because it was becoming resistant to chemical applications and beginning to hit yields. Tony said to me, “No, no, Hylton. Blackgrass isn’t your problem. The blackgrass is a signpost that’s pointing to your problem. Your problem is in the soil”. 

We got a spade, and we struggled to get the spade into the ground because I’ve got very heavy clay here. Eventually we got the spade into the soil and turned it over and it was solid, it was lifeless, it was sad. And we walked 50 yards to a little copse, which I know hasn’t been farmed for 50 years, and it was a totally different story. The soil was dark, it was friable, it smelt delicious, and it was teeming with worms and bugs.

How did you start being concerned for the environment? 

The underlying motivation began when my first son was born, and I started thinking seriously about the state of the Earth that we were leaving to the next generation. My son was born in 1997 which happened to be the year that the Kyoto Protocol came into effect, which was the first time that the world really agreed to come together to try to do something about this existential crisis that we’re facing – climate change. 

At that stage I looked around and thought, what’s my particular piece of the jigsaw where I could possibly make a difference, and I basically focused on rainforests. I went to Brazil when I was 17, and in a sense, it’s never quite left me. If you get deep into the forest, it is like going into a natural cathedral. It’s where the biosphere meets the atmosphere or where Earth meets Heaven. 

After your financial work in Brazil, you launched a project with the Government of Guyana and the Commonwealth Secretariat, seeking to conserve the rainforest by monetising ecosystem services. How would you summarise your early ventures into carbon markets and generating carbon credits?

The problem underlying deforestation is that the global economy runs on an extractive model, not a regenerative model. You can make money from palm oil, soya and beef – but not from the standing trees. Somehow or other, we have to make the forest worth more alive than dead. I set up a company called Canopy Capital and acquired the rights to the ecosystem services of 1,000,000 acres of pristine rainforest in Guyana, at Iwokrama, which means “A place of refuge” in the Makushi language. 

To cut a long story short, I failed to generate any carbon credits for lack of additionality. There was no sufficiently immediate and clear threat to the forest and no departure from business as usual – and therefore I couldn’t generate any credits. In carbon market terms, that rainforest, that million acres teeming with life, was worthless.

How did you work towards soil carbon certification on your farm?

Back in Leicestershire, I thought that if I went on a journey of redemption and restoration and if I was able to measure that journey, I might be able to demonstrate that this is a departure from business as usual and therefore be able to generate credits. I knew a firm of carbon market specialists called Respira and they said to me, “if you go through all the hoops and end up being able to quantify your sequestration, we will underwrite the purchase of credits”.

Soil measurement was done by an independent firm called Ecometric. They took soil samples and sent them off to the lab to establish the baseline and then came back 12 months later to measure again. We deducted on farm emissions – tractors running around, artificial applications of nitrogen, and methane from the cattle – and put 20% into a buffer pool to account for any uncertainty. Respira were only going to buy credits if they were measured, not modelled, because they were going to have to on-sell them to somebody else and needed to know what they were selling.

We ended up selling 5,000 certificates at £20 a tonne. So that’s £100,000. It was broadly speaking the same as my BPS, the Basic Payment Scheme, which is coming to an end. Knowing that I am carbon positive definitely makes me feel happier. Instead of feeling that I’m part of the problem, generating emissions, I think I’m part of the solution. The changes I’ve had to adopt are quite radical because I’ve had to reintroduce livestock and give up ploughing. Every time you turn the soil, you’re exposing carbon to oxygen and generating emissions. You’re also destroying your soil structure and exposing your best friend – the worm – to his worst enemy, the seagull.

What would you say to other farmers about regenerative farming?

You know what I was saying about an arable rotation that just is take, take, take. It just is not right; you have to give back. You need livestock to generate farmyard manure which is then applied to arable fields for the succeeding year’s crop to flourish. All my life I’ve known the verse from Genesis [1:28] when God created Man, encouraged him to “go forth and multiply” and have dominion over the Earth. But I’d overlooked that there’s a little phrase between going forth and having dominion. It says replenish the earth. 

You need a balance. There are two parts to the covenant. Yes, we have been given dominion. But dominion comes with the responsibility to replenish.

It’s right there from the very beginning of time. What is Adam in Hebrew? Adamah is the earth. You know, we are the earth, so if we destroy the earth, we destroy ourselves. Time is of the essence. I think that the key thing is to put soil centre stage and if you look after the soil, at the end of the day, the soil will look after you.