Be The Earth is deeply committed to regenerating food and farming systems. That’s why we’re proud to support Clare Hill, a regenerative farmer and co-founder of Planton Farm & Roots to Regeneration — a 2-year programme equipping farmers and industry leaders with the tools, hands-on experience, and supportive network for transitioning to regenerative agriculture.
In our interview, Clare shares her journey — from corporate agriculture to championing decentralised food systems — and why true regeneration starts with shifting mindsets as much as soil.
Tell us about your journey into regenerative agriculture. Was there a particular turning point for you?
I studied agriculture at university and then began my career in the food industry, as I didn’t come from a traditional farming family. I worked for organisations like Red Tractor, the National Farmers Union, Sainsbury’s, and eventually FAI Farms — a sustainability and animal welfare consultancy for the big food brands.
I'd always thought my role in the world was working with the big guys, because change at that level could have a massive impact.
McDonald’s globally sources 0.5% of the world's beef, equivalent to 7 million cattle per year: influencing their supply chain felt like it could create ripple effects across the industry.
At FAI Farms — alongside consulting work with big brands like McDonald’s and Marks & Spencer — I took on managing the farm. My husband and I had a small sheep business, so for various reasons, I also ended up running the farm. It was during this time that I started to really question the way we were doing things.
A turning point for me came in 2018 during the Beast from the East — a bitterly cold spring followed by heavy flooding. The farm was on a floodplain that used to flood once a decade — it had started flooding annually, then multiple times a year.
During lambing season, we had to move sheep to higher ground, but even that land was absolutely saturated. Lambs were born into fields drenched in water.
Our team was exhausted, and one day, a colleague told me he couldn’t continue recording data as we had been doing. We’d been meticulously tagging and weighing lambs at 24 hours old, collecting data to track their lives.
When he said, “I can’t do this,” I felt conflicted. In my head, I was thinking, “if we stop, we’ll lose a year’s worth of data”. But I also saw a man in front of me saying: “This is not working. It’s breaking everybody. We can’t keep going like this.”
It was a really difficult decision that went against everything I believed in up until that point. But we were breaking ourselves to fit into a system that wasn’t working.
We’ve been conditioned to not trust our intuition anymore — to prioritise the data and the science. Standing there in the torrential rain, I started to feel the cracks in the system.
I began learning about regenerative agriculture and attended a three-day training programme with Caroline Grindrod — now my co-founder. It totally blew my mind. Until then, I had felt that something about conventional farming wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know the alternative. The training opened my eyes to a new way of thinking.
We secured funding for a regenerative agriculture project on the farm, and the more I learned, the more I saw — the more I couldn’t unsee. While others in the business were content with just improving grazing methods, I felt we needed to go further — towards decentralised and equitable food systems. But the company’s priorities didn’t align with that vision, so I left FAI and the corporate world.
The week after I left, I joined Be The Earth's Blossom Accelerator at 42 Acres. That experience was transformational.
It introduced me to the world of funding and startups — something I had never navigated before, having always worked in larger corporate settings.
On that first night, sitting in a circle around a fire, we were asked what we were leaving behind.
“Seventeen years of corporate hurt”, I said, throwing a stick into the flames.
What sparked the idea for ‘Roots to Regeneration’?
The idea originally came to me while I was still managing the farm in Oxford. We had transitioned to regenerative practices, but I realised there was a significant knowledge gap — farmers and industry professionals didn’t know how to implement these changes. I knew we needed training programmes, and I got very excited at the time.
After completing the Blossom Accelerator, I became convinced that regenerative agriculture needed its own accelerator programme.
The principles of regeneration — tuning in, observing, adapting — can’t be learned in a classroom. They need to be experienced. The accelerator model, with its immersive, hands-on approach, felt the perfect fit.
Without having a plan or knowing how to pull it together, I started telling anyone who would listen, and eventually, I connected with Caroline again. She had a training programme she wanted to launch, while I had the accelerator model in mind. We merged our ideas, creating a hybrid programme that combines in-depth learning with practical, hands-on experience.
We launched applications in November 2023, and our first cohort began in March 2024. We’re now starting our second cohort, aiming to run one group per year with around twenty participants.
Our programme includes both farmers and industry professionals from sectors like food, fibre, and finance. Although we structure two distinct ‘roots’ — one for farmers and one for professionals — most participants span both worlds.
Each participant follows a personalised learning path, covering essential topics like soil health, grazing planning, regenerative leadership, and organisational design.
The goal is not just to teach regenerative agriculture but to embed it into the wider food system.
What’s the biggest barrier for people transitioning to regenerative farming?
Culture in farming. We have this deeply ingrained culture — in some ways envied by others — nothing unites people in the same way. It’s really special. At the same time, this means that when people try to do things differently, there’s a locking down and a stigma. People get really angry. Change is met with resistance at every stage. It’s like it directly insults other farmers.
Farmers face pressure not just from their peers but from their entire support network — vets, agronomists, land agents, banks, and family members.
Even when farmers want to transition, they hit roadblocks. For example, a farmer might want to shift to lower-yield but more sustainable dairy production, only to find their milk contract (often tied to their bank loan) prevents them from doing so.
Roots to Regeneration addresses this by providing long-term support. Many regenerative agriculture events last only a day or two, leaving participants inspired but isolated when they return home.
Our two-year programme builds a strong support network, so farmers don’t feel alone when they face resistance. It provides a safe cloak around a cohort of people going through a similar transition at the same time.
When everyone at home may be telling them “this is wrong” — they’ve got a whole community of people around them saying: “No, we get it. We see it the same as you now”.
What excites you most about the future of regenerative agriculture?
In a world that can feel depressing, regenerative agriculture is hopeful.
What excites me most is its ability to address multiple issues at once. It improves soil health, reduces flooding, sequesters carbon, increases biodiversity, and produces nutrient-dense food. It challenges corporate food production, dominated by ultra-processed products that harm both people and the planet.
A common criticism of regenerative farming is that it requires more people. But that’s not a flaw: the more people that can have a proactive role in growing food, the happier everyone will be.
More hands in the soil means stronger local communities and economies, deeper connections to nature, and greater feelings of purpose.
Through every lens — food, climate, mental health, and community — regeneration is, for me, the easy way to a better, happier way of being.
