ARK SUMMIT 2026 - AGENDA

At a Glance

09.00 — Qigong, Breathwork & T’ai Chi

09.00 — Tea & Coffee

10.00 — Opening Keynotes & Panel Sessions

11.30 — Workshops & Nature Walks

13.00 — Lunch by The Bushcamp

14.20 — Panels, Workshops & Farm Tour

17.30 — Free Bar, Live Music & Entertainment

21.00 — Close

Main Stage: Roadmapping the Future of Land, Food & Nature

Welcome Remarks: A year on the Farm
Steve Winwood

Beyond the Noise – The Rest Is Politics and Policy
Since 2024, UK farming has faced rapid policy re-engineering, from the redesign of SFI, debate around inheritance tax and Agricultural Property Relief, the rise of biodiversity and carbon markets, and renewed rhetoric around food security and sovereignty. At the same time, media narratives of “war on farmers”, rewilding land grabs, and political U-turns have created confusion and volatility for farm businesses trying to plan long term. This panel cuts through the noise to examine what has materially changed in grants, tax, ELMs architecture and the long-term farming roadmap; whether nature finance is complementing or crowding out regenerative agriculture; how different political scenarios could reshape support for farming, net zero and land use; and, crucially, how farmers can build resilient business models that withstand policy swings while continuing to produce food, restore ecosystems and remain profitable.

Patrick Holden, Founder & CEO, Sustainable Food Trust
Sue Pritchard, Chief Executive, Food, Farming & Countryside Commission

Food, nature and national security: reducing global dependencies in an uncertain world
National food resilience, in the face of ecological degradation and geopolitical rupture, requires fundamental action to address inherent systemic risks and vulnerabilities that have the capacity to cascade and threaten societal health and cohesion. Understanding weaknesses within key supply chains - for example for fertilisers, pesticides, antibiotics, machinery parts, data and energy - and within society - for example, diet, health, power imbalance and policy - will be critical if we are to reduce exposure to increasingly volatile markets, establish food system resilience, reduce farm dependencies and strengthen UK value chains.
This session will examine geopolitical risk and explore actions that can be taken at farm level and within the food system more broadly.

ffinlo Costain, Chief Editor, 8point9
Mike Gooding, Farming Systems Director, AHDB
Lieutenant General Richard Nugee CB CVO CBE, Non-Executive Member for the Defence Safety and Environmental Committee

From Soil to Supermarket – The Regenerative Supply Chain
As organic food remains a premium, values-driven choice and regenerative agriculture moves from niche to mainstream, the central question is whether supply chains can genuinely support transition at scale. Retailers increasingly speak of soil health, biodiversity and reduced chemical inputs, yet farmers continue to face tight margins, volatile contracts and asymmetric risk. Can supermarkets and food businesses meaningfully co-invest in long-term resilience, or are regenerative commitments constrained by price competition and short-term procurement models? How are value, risk and data distributed along the chain - and who ultimately captures the upside? Are we challenging the status quo deeply enough to shift structural incentives? At the supermarket, or through alternative farm-to-consumer models, where do food quality, nutrient density and public health truly sit? Can better food become an economic driver of transition, creating a genuine social premium that rewards outcomes rather than marketing claims? Or will regeneration remain a sustainability add-on rather than a core commercial proposition? As online grocery platforms and AI increasingly influence what consumers see, compare and buy, who ultimately controls the signals that determine which food systems are rewarded - and which are discounted? This session examines what realistic, scalable transition models look like for growers, processors and retailers alike.

Guy Singh-Watson, Founder, Riverford
Lee Truelove, Head of Regenerative Farming, First Milk
Harry Dyer, Co-Founder, Shrub London
Alison Muirhead, Senior Commercial Manager, Soil Association Certification

Contracts, Capital & Long-Term Risk – Who Pays for Resilience?
As public budgets tighten, resilience increasingly depends on how capital flows through farming and land use. From SFI and ELMs design to biodiversity net gain, carbon markets and blended finance structures, new funding mechanisms promise opportunity - but also introduce long-term contractual obligations, data requirements and liability risks. This session explores the “nuts and bolts” of financing resilience: how public and private capital interact; who carries downside risk in long-duration environmental agreements; whether nature finance complements or competes with productive farming; and how farmers can navigate contracts that shape land-use decisions for decades.

Tim Field, Co-Founder, North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster
Will Lockhart OBE, Deputy Director, Nature Markets and Investment, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Alex Robinson, Commercial Director, Zora Ecosystems

From Farm to Landscape Recovery – Regeneration at Scale
Scale matters to ecosystems, to investors and to markets. While individual farms can improve soils, water and biodiversity, many resilience challenges operate beyond farm boundaries. Flood mitigation, habitat connectivity, nutrient management and carbon sequestration often require coordination at catchment and landscape level.
Economically, projects must be large enough to justify the transaction, monitoring and structuring costs that institutional capital, investors and supply chains require. Aggregated natural capital schemes and producer groups can reduce risk, lower overheads and create volumes that markets can absorb, whether in commodities, carbon or biodiversity units.
This session examines the lessons emerging from landscape recovery projects, catchment partnerships and aggregated models. What environmental and economic outcomes can genuinely be measured at landscape scale - improved water retention, biodiversity recovery, yield stability, risk reduction? Do these models strengthen local farming economies and resilience, or do they risk concentrating control in the hands of large capital actors? The question is not simply how to restore nature, but how land, finance and community intersect when resilience is pursued beyond the farm gate. Crucially, is landscape-scale collaboration the mechanism that enables food and nature transition at the scale that planetary and human health require?

Tim Coates, Director, North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster
Matt Whitney, Manager, Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership Secretary, Local Nature Recovery APPG
Sarah Brownlie, Director of Development, Rebuilding Nature
Eoin Murray, CIO, Rebalance Earth
Edward Earnshaw, Managing Director, Just Farm

Closing Debate: Finding Common Ground – The Pathway to Food Transition at Scale
After a day exploring policy, capital, supply chains, practical farming and landscape-scale regeneration, this closing debate asks a crucial question: what does credible transition actually look like over the next decade? Regenerative agriculture is often presented as a unified movement, yet clear differences remain between fully organic systems and lower-input regenerative approaches that retain synthetic tools. In a time of climate volatility, economic pressure and political uncertainty, what is a realistic and scalable pathway forward? How do we align farmers, policymakers, retailers, investors and consumers around genuine system change? Can ambition and pragmatism coexist, and if so, on what terms? Is widespread incremental improvement across conventional systems more impactful in the short term than a smaller number of full organic transitions? If so, how should progress be measured, and how do we create incentives for continuous year-on-year improvement? Beyond environmental metrics, where do food quality, public health and nutrient density sit within this transition? Can they become economic drivers of change rather than moral arguments at the margins?

Jonty Brunyee, Agroecological Farmer and Regenerative Mentor/Consultant, Conygree Farm
Rachel Phillips, CEO, Apricot Centre
Ed Horton, Regenerative Farmer & Managing Partner, SS Horton & Sons