Ian Pigott farms just 20 miles outside London, growing wheat, oilseed rape, and oats in rotation. His farm is a LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) demonstration site. He moved his operation to no-till farming, crediting the shift to conversations with fellow Global Farmer Network members. Learning how growers elsewhere had made the same change gave him the confidence to try it on his own ground — part of a broader push toward regenerative agriculture and soil health.
"Fork-to-farm," not farm-to-fork. Pigott has founded an education charity and a pop-up farm to get young people interested in agriculture. He argues the standard "farm-to-fork" framing has it backwards: "Farm-to-fork is completely wrong, it needs to be fork-to-farm. Because you need to start with the young person and work backwards to the farm." His view: "Agriculture is a destination for the best and brightest."
Pigott's story is a version of what the Global Farmer Network is built around — farmers learning from each other's on-the-ground experience and turning that into practices (and advocacy) that reach beyond their own fields.
