In 2024 Waitrose unveiled its pioneering ‘Farming for Nature’ initiative which committed to support more than 2000 of its British farmers to move to nature-friendly farming practices, helping to boost financial resilience of farms in the long-term and combat the effects of climate change.

Nearly a year on, Pollination Director Valerie Pinkerton spoke to Andrew Hoad, Head of Leckford, The Waitrose Farm and Business Lead for Farming for Nature at Waitrose about the initiative and its progress to date.

Valerie Pinkerton (VP): Can you explain what “nature-friendly farming” means to Waitrose?

Andrew Hoad (AH): An integrated farming system that helps nature thrive and where nature actively contributes to the production of healthy, high quality, nutritious food

VP: What motivated Waitrose to adopt nature-friendly farming practices?

AH: Our programme is predominantly focused on UK agriculture. We need to evolve to a farming system that is both resilient to weather extremes and enables nature to recover from its currently depleted state. As a point in case the UK harvest was down around 25% on average levels in 2024 primarily due to a very wet winter and low sunshine hours during Spring. A farming system which regenerates soils and works with nature to tackle issues of pests and disease will provide a more effective buffer from effects of climatic change and the effects of nature loss. This has the potential to reduce the reliance on synthetic inputs over time which can be both beneficial commercially and environmentally.

VP: What specific practices are involved in Waitrose’s nature-friendly farming approach?

AH: We are following the six key principles of regenerative agriculture. These are broadly recognised as:

Understanding farm context, minimising soil disturbance, maximising plant diversity, living root all year round, keeping soil covered and integrating livestock where it is possible.

Aligned to this is ensuring that the farm ecosystem is functioning well and enabling nature to thrive as part of the whole farm.

VP: How does Waitrose ensure that its farming partners adhere to these nature-friendly practices and how are you measuring the environmental benefits of implementing them?

AH: We are at the start of a 10 year transition to regenerative agriculture as part of our commitment to Net Zero farming by 2035. We are currently working with a small group of satellite farmers to design practices that are adoptable within specific supply chains which recognises the unique characteristics of different sectors. Once we are confident that these are effective we will scale across supply chains, as part of this we will measure and report on uptake and also design and report on key outcome metrics around soil, water, biodiversity and carbon.

We have also embarked on the roll out of Land App across our own label supply chain to enable us to accurately base line the current state of nature across our farms and to help farmers develop land management plans.

VP: How does nature-friendly farming impact biodiversity on and around Waitrose farms?

AH: We will measure impact over time but all of the regenerative farming practices aim to increase biodiversity -below and above ground – through reduced disturbance, supporting ecosystem recovery and drawing on nature to reduce the reliance on synthetic inputs. Examples would be field margins providing habitats for friendly insects reducing the need for pesticide use, use of multi species leys to support wider functioning ecosystems, minimising mechanical and chemical soil disturbance enabling soil function to build organic matter and soil health building soil fertility.

VP: How have the farmers and local communities responded to Waitrose’s nature-friendly farming initiatives?

AH: Our Waitrose farmers are a strong group with a good track record in high welfare sustainable farming practices so are generally supportive of the ambition. A number of our farmers have already made the decision to adopt regenerative practices and they are positive about the recognition and additional support that Waitrose is providing. For any farmer that is yet to start we know the thought of transition could be daunting. Our programme has been designed to enable farmers to build confidence through specific guidance on practices and learning from other farmers. Our work with our satellite farmers will help ensure that the guidance we provide will be directly relevant to the farming sector they operate in which is another important factor in building confidence and removing barriers that may exist.

VP: What kind of support does Waitrose provide to farmers to help them transition to and maintain nature-friendly farming practices?

AH: Our programme is split into three key areas: technical support, measurement and transition support.

VP: What challenges do you foresee in implementing nature-friendly farming, and how have these been addressed?

AH: There are a number of barriers that we have identified which any farmer/business needs to overcome. We think a key priority is to build technical ‘know how’ and our work with LEAF, our own farm at Leckford and University of Reading are all critical in this.

VP: How does Waitrose handle the potential increase in costs associated with nature-friendly farming?

AH: We believe our Farming for Nature programme is essential to effectively mitigate the risk to food security from extreme weather and nature loss. If we take a long term view we are confident that farmers will directly benefit from transitioning to regenerative farming as their cost of production could reduce significantly through reduced field work and lower input costs. Our work with our farmers is vital in ensuring that farmers are able to transition at a pace that works for their business.

VP: What are Waitrose’s future goals for expanding or enhancing its nature-friendly farming initiatives?

AH: We are committed to transition our UK land-based farmers to regenerative farming to help meet our 2035 Net Zero objective. We are constantly reviewing how we best achieve this and are working with a broadening group of external partners to help deliver this goal, such as LEAF and LandApp.

VP: How does Waitrose plan to measure and report on the long-term success of its nature-friendly farming efforts?

AH: We routinely report on our ethics and sustainability commitments and Farming for Nature will form part of that. We are likely to report on key metrics around soil, water, carbon and nature.

VP: How does Waitrose communicate the benefits of nature-friendly farming to its customers?

AH: We know our customers recognise Waitrose as a high welfare, ethical, sustainable retailer. Through our work with both our own suppliers and branded suppliers we are developing ways to highlight nature friendly products to consumers and to build understanding as to why this is so important for us to act in this way. We have had a great customer reaction to the new Leckford regeneratively farmed bread branding.

VP: How do Waitrose’s nature-friendly farming practices compare to industry standards and those of other retailers? What is your ambition?

AH: We know there is some really good work going on across a number of UK retailers related to carbon and nature. Our ‘Farming for Nature’ programme is bold in its intent to adopt regenerative farming practices across our UK farms (over 2,000). Our initiatives that support this ambition must also be impactful, an example of this is our commitment to support every UK farm with access to Land App and paid for advisory resources to help build farm land management plans.

VP: How has the initiative progressed since its launch?

AH: We are progressing well. Late in 2024 we brought together a dedicated team to lead the programme and this brings together expertise from a number of important disciplines. We are also excited to have our satellite farms on board representing 10 different farming sectors. If 2024 was a foundational year then 2025 is the year when we embed the building blocks to deliver the next 10 years of this long term commitment to help transform the food system. We continue to build activities into our programme and we have begun the roll out of Land App across our supply base and have recently launched a £500K Net Zero fund.

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