Archives: Team Members

Rob is based on the Devon/Cornwall border and is one of our Farm Carbon and Soils Advisors here at FCT. Rob came to us from a farm advisory role with the Devon Wildlife Trust. Here he primarily advised farmers on management changes to help improve water quality, as well as helping farmers to provide wider ecosystem services. Rob has an extensive background in livestock and arable farming in the UK, and further afield in Canada. He is passionate about regenerative systems, especially grazing systems and believes soil health should be at the core of any farm business.

Rob has also previously been the Southwest Regional facilitator for Pasture for Life, providing advice and support for its members in the region. Additionally he has a BSc in Environmental Biology from the University of Nottingham.

Location: South West

Read ‘A day in the life of Rob Purdew‘ here.

Andrew is an arable farmer in Hampshire with a strong conservation and sustainability mind-set. Beyond the farm he has been involved in many initiatives primarily focused on climate change and renewable energy.

In the early 1990s he initiated, with friends, the setting up of a local environmental charity, which, with Andrew as its chair for 15 years, grew to employ 25 people.

Andrew has worked in wind, solar, storage and anaerobic digestion, and was a member of Forum for the Future’s Steering Committee for their “Farm Power – Putting Agriculture on the Grid” project. He was a founder of a Community Interest Company seeking to set up a local community bank focused on low-carbon and social enterprise lending.

He was also part of a team that established a new retail business, initially based at his farm, and remained a director until it reached £1M turnover.

Thus, Andrew has experience beyond farming of board management, fundraising, business start-ups, and working for government agencies and NGOs. He has been a director of Farm Carbon Toolkit since 2014.

His farm has been a net exporter of electricity from solar PV for over a decade, and this has also enabled his personal and business car use to be virtually carbon-free by utilising the PV to charge an electric car.

Location: South East

Jonathan runs Scilly Organics, growing fruit and veg that is sold locally on the Isles of Scilly. From 5 acres he runs a small box scheme, has a small roadside stall and supplies cafes and restaurants. Sustainable, resilient and low carbon food production is something he does on a daily basis! Jonathan also has a yurt on the farm that he lets out to visitors.

He wrote and co-developed what is now the Farm Carbon Calculator. Our online tool available to farmers and growers that allows them to accurately assess the carbon footprint of their farm businesses. He oversees strategic direction and development of the Calculator, which is currently going through a significant and exciting phase of development.

A founder member of Transition Scilly, Jonathan has been heavily involved with community initiatives to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, reduce individual and collective carbon footprints, and increase the resilience of the community. Enabling sustainabile living has been a part of his life for the past 20 years or more.

Jonathan is one of the original directors of Farm Carbon Toolkit.

Location: South West

Sam has been a non-executive Director at FCT since 2018 and the General Manager since August 2020. Sam was attracted to FCT because of its practical and positive approach – and the belief that farmer-to-farmer engagement is one of the best ways to support change in agriculture.

Sam previously worked with the sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future. His work there focused on supporting large organisations across the food and farming sector to grapple with the grand task of shifting our food and farming systems so that they support better livelihoods, healthier lifestyles and strengthened ecosystems. Sam is interested in how society can build greater resilience, while rapidly decarbonising and adapting to an increasingly challenging climate. 

In 2012-16, Sam managed Sutton Community Farm, a community-owned horticultural farm and VegBox scheme on the outskirts of London, that creates a warm, welcoming environment for people to join in. Before this, Sam spent four years at the sustainability charity Bioregional, where he developed his interest in carbon and ecological footprinting. Part of his role there helped organisations to understand and act on their footprints. 

In 2019, Sam was awarded a Nuffield Farming Scholarship which is focusing on the excitement and hope in the regenerative agriculture movement and whether it is offering a shared, transformative ambition for the food and farming sector.

To find out more, read Sam’s “Day in the Life” blog.

Location: Scotland

I obtained a BSc in Agriculture from Reading University in 1983 and have farmed on the Oxon/Wilts border near Faringdon ever since. I am a tenant of the National Trust on 750 acres at Colleymore farm and a part owner of 450 acres at Westmill farm. The farm business has a 110 cow dairy herd, arable and beef enterprises, several alternative farm enterprises and a HLS scheme.

I have been working on renewable energy generation and energy saving on the farm for over twenty years ranging from a 5MW Solar PV installation (commissioned July 2011) to extensive use of insulation in the farm buildings, experimenting with a legume understory in wheat to reduce use of nitrogen and N2O losses, a heat exchanger for the bulk tank etc etc.

I spent far too long (17 years!!) setting up Westmill wind farm, the largest wind farm in central southern England (5 x 1.3 MW turbines – www.westmill.coop); for this I was a finalist in Farmers Weekly Green Energy Farmer of the Year 2010. 

I also helped set up community owned Westmill Solar Farm alongside the wind farm, for which I was a finalist in the Farmers Weekly Green Energy Farmer of the Year 2013 and Farmers Guardian Renewables Innovator of the Year 2013. I’m very clear about the importance and urgency of engaging, both within and beyond my work, with the threat of climate change and our responsibility to make change. FCT is my attempting to do that within my profession.You can read more about Westmill wind farm here.

Becky joined FCT in January 2014.  Prior to this, Becky worked on the SWARM Knowledge Hub, a project tasked with helping farmers and growers across the South West manage their resources sustainably.  As part of the SWARM Hub project, Becky was part of the team that developed the Farm Crap App, a mobile phone app to help farmers calculate the nutritive value of livestock manures.

 A passionate advocate for highlighting the economic benefits of sustainable farming, Becky currently divides her time between working for FCT and working for Duchy College Rural Business School as a technical specialist in resource management. In 2016 Becky was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship to study further how to communicate carbon reduction schemes to farmers, which has fed into her work at FCT and Duchy College.

Location: South West