★Save the Date★ ACE Festival 14th September 2025

View here
Get Involved

Regen Mentoring Project

Intro

ACE Monmouth is all about bringing the community together to tackle climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Farmers are very much part of the local Monmouth community. ACE set up this project to encourage farmers into the ACE community and to explore with them regenerative agriculture.
Local funders provided support:

  • Monmouthshire Food Partnership (through Monmouthshire County Council)
  • Wye Valley National Landscapes (formerly AONB)
  • Size of Wales
  • ACE Monmouth via Monmouth Town Council

Click here for the FULL report.

Reports

Videos

Press Coverage

Project Basics:

  • An expert in regenerative agriculture mentored three farms for 12 months helping them to transition to regen
  • The mentor was Regen Ben (or Ben Taylor Davies) who lives in near Ross on Wye
  • Three very different Monmouthshire farms took part
  • Each had six sessions with Ben to help them move towards regenerative agriculture in a way that would NOT bankrupt them

 

The three farms covered a total of 1,404 acres of Monmouthshire countryside. They included:

  • An organic and mixed family-run farm with 190 acres – Square Farm
  • A council tenanted farm, mainly calf rearing and sheep, on 114 acres – Lower House Farm
  • A large estate, mainly pasture and arable, of 1,100 acres – Llanover

Results - done, doing, planned:

1. Soil testing (chemical & biological)
2. Herbal leys
3. No till and shallow ploughing
4. Pigs for weed control
5. Johnson-Su and Bokashi composting system
6. Reduced inputs (e.g. pesticides, fertilisers etc)
7. Soya feed alternatives investigated (addressing tropical deforestation)
8. Ecological survey of flora
9. Joining Wildfarmed regen wheat growing community
10. New business ventures (e.g. farm shops, flower farm, on-farm events etc)
11. New product lines through collaboration
12. New social media accounts / websites
13. Community invited on farm (e.g. open days and farm tours)
14. New public footpaths
15. Groundswell attendance
16. Relationship-building with ACE Monmouth community

The farmers involved in the project set up a new farmers’ Facebook group:

  •  “Talk Farm Regen Monmouthshire”
  • Currently has 342 members (March 25)
  • The Monmouthshire Food Partnership ran multiple soil health related events through 2023 /2024 for farmers

Barriers:

  •  Poor understanding of regen initially by ACE volunteers, the funders and indeed many local farmers
  • It soon became apparent that some of the initial objectives could not be achieved in 12 months as it takes 5-7 years to transition to regen
  • Current legislation caused barriers during the project – slow and difficult planning, short tenancy agreements, environmentally damaging subsidy schemes, uncertainty on subsidies making planning difficult

Events associated with the project:

The project has been represented at the following events, either by individual speakers or with display boards:

  • ACE Talk by mentee farmer Rob Whittall to Monmouth community November 2024

  • Talk by mentee farmer Rob Whittall to local farmers February 2025

  • Wales Climate Week 2023

  • Oxford Real Food and Farming Conference 2024

  • Marches Real Food and Farming Convergence 2024

  • Six Inches of Soil April 2024

  • Friends of the River Wye “Restore the River” event 2024

  • Abergavenny Friends of the Earth meeting 2024

  • Climate Community Champions 2024

  • Numerous ACE Monmouth monthly community meetings

  • ACE Monmouth Christmas party 2023 & 2024

  • ACE Monmouth Seed Swap 2025

  • ACE Monmouth and Haberdashers “Monmouth Feast” 2024

  • ACE Monmouth Festival 2023