I’m a strong believer that there are only a handful of moments in life where you realise you’ve been thinking about something completely wrong. Not slightly off. Not misinformed. Just…fundamentally disconnected from the reality of how things actually work. That was me, standing on a 92-acre farm in the Yorkshire uplands, puffer coat to my ankles, wellies drenched in mud and wind slapping my face, trying to process the fact that everything I thought I knew about sustainability, carbon, and even farming was, frankly, a bit surface-level. I spent the day with Dr Vincent Walsh, managing director of Regenfuture Co at their BioHub, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it has completely rewired how I understand sustainability. Not in a cute, “this is inspiring” way. But in a very real, slightly uncomfortable, “we are not going hard enough” way. Because what they’re doing isn’t just sustainable. It’s regenerative. And those two things I’ve learned are seemingly not the same.
Regenfuture Co is the company behind the BioHub, a 92-acre landscape sitting 250 metres above sea level, right up in the Yorkshire uplands. What they’re building isn’t just a farm. It’s a fully functioning regenerative system designed to restore ecosystems, rebuild soil, and rethink how land can operate entirely. It used to be what most farmland in the UK still is: sheep and grass. A system built on extraction. A system that, when you look at it, doesn’t really give much back.
The original farmer, Derek Greenwood, has lived on and worked that land since he was seven years old. He’s never left Yorkshire, never been married, never had a passport and never really stepped away from the rhythm of the farm. It’s a life that feels almost rare now, but in many ways reflects a whole generation of UK farmers whose relationship to land isn’t just work, but inheritance, identity, and continuity. For decades, Derek has cared for that land in the way it’s always been done, following a system passed down over generations, one that prioritised livestock, routine, and resilience. At one point, his family managed up to 2,000 sheep, which speaks not just to scale, but to the kind of pressure and expectations that have shaped British farming for years.
You can tell almost immediately that Dr Vincent isn’t your typical farmer. Adorned in ‘bioΣtekΣ’ tattoos, he’s not even your typical scientist. He operates somewhere in between ecology, systems thinking, cosmology, and practical design. The way his mind works feels less like someone who has studied nature, and more like someone who has spent years trying to think like it. But there’s such a relatability to him, a kind of grounded confidence that doesn’t feel performative or overly academic. He’s not trying to impress you with jargon, even though he absolutely could. Instead, he explains complex systems in a way that feels almost obvious, like he’s just reminding you of something you should have always known. His background spans years of action-led research across different landscapes, from the UK to places like Ethiopia, Croatia and Mallorca, working directly with land rather than just theorising about it. You get the sense that his understanding hasn’t come from sitting in institutions, but from physically being in these environments, testing, failing, observing, and refining. And despite the scale of what he’s doing now, there’s nothing removed or corporate about him. He’s walking the land, grabbing piles of worm poo, explaining complex systems like a game of football he watched last night, fully aware that nature doesn’t operate in perfect, controlled outcomes. He’s deeply serious about the work, but manages to comprehend it in a way that feels light and frankly, makes so much sense. Which, in a space that can sometimes feel like it’s driven by buzzwords and optics, is extremely rare.
His entire approach is rooted in observation before intervention. Before anything was built, planted, or changed, he spent a full year just watching the land. Every morning. Midnight. Midday. Every season. Tracking where water moved, where it disappeared, where animals gathered, where the wind hit hardest, where the sun landed. Not designing over the land, but understanding it. That alone already feels like a radical shift from how most industries operate. We’re used to speed. Outputs. Scaling fast. Solutions before understanding the problem. But here, the starting point is patience. Respect. Letting the land tell you what it needs. And that’s exactly why he’s the right person to lead this. Because what Regenfuture Co is doing isn’t about imposing a system. It’s about building one that already wants to exist. The BioHub is essentially a living, breathing demonstration of what happens when you move from a linear system to a circular one. Every single element feeds into something else. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is isolated. Dr Vincent kept coming back to this idea of “biological feedback loops,” and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Take water, for example. When they first arrived on site, there were no water features. None. Which, when you think about it, already tells you everything about how limited that ecosystem was. Now, there are 45 water features across the farm, with plans to push that to around 60. But it’s not just about adding ponds for aesthetics. It’s about hydrology. About slowing water down, holding it, spreading it across the landscape instead of letting it rush off and take the soil with it.
They’ve built swales which are these long, curved trench-like structures that follow the natural contour lines of the land. Instead of water running straight downhill and causing erosion, it’s caught, held, and gradually absorbed evenly across the soil. What that does over time is rebuild the water table. It creates consistent moisture in the land, even in summer months when farms like this would usually dry out completely. And suddenly, life starts coming back. Frogs. Toads. Dragonflies. Birds.
And this is where it stops being theory and starts becoming very real.
Personally, I love a good story, and what feels most uplifting here is that Derek didn’t resist change, he made space for it. Opening up his land to Dr Vincent Walsh and Regenfuture Co wasn’t a given. In fact, many local farmers were sceptical, even dismissive, of what Vincent was proposing. The idea that you could hold water across land like this, all year round, went against everything they’d experienced. It simply hadn’t been done.
But over time, as the systems began to take shape, and particularly during one dry summer where surrounding farms struggled for water, something shifted. The same land that people doubted became the only place still holding water, to the point where farmers who once questioned it were bringing their sheep across. It’s a quiet but powerful moment, and one that says as much about Derek’s openness as it does about the potential of regenerative thinking. And it’s exactly at that intersection, between tradition and transformation, that Dr Vincent Walsh steps in.
Between you and I, I would’ve been almost overflowing with the urge to say a resounding “I told you so,” but it’s probably for the best that I’m not in Dr Vincent’s shoes.
He also said something that stuck with me: if you want more birds, you don’t start with birds. You start with everything they eat. That’s the level of systems thinking we’re talking about. It’s not about targeting outcomes directly. It’s about creating the conditions for those outcomes to emerge naturally. And that phrase, “conditions for life,” is basically the foundation of everything they’re doing.
So essentially, by that logic, if you want to see more of me, just make sure there’s a glass of rosé and nocellara olives.
The same thinking even applies to soil, which, I have to admit, was the biggest eye-opener for me personally. Because before this, “carbon” felt intangible. Like a buzzword. Something brands and companies throw into reports or campaigns talking about “capturing” it to sound responsible. I never really understood what it was, beyond emissions and offsets. Here’s me envisioning a huge AC type unit in the middle of a field somehow pulling in carbon and letting out fresh air. Which now in reflection is actually hilarious that I thought that.
Standing there, holding actual soil in my hands, listening to Dr Vincent explain it, something clicked. Carbon isn’t just something in the air. It’s something that can be built, stored, and held within the ground. If the system allows for it. And most systems don’t. Traditional farming, especially with livestock and monoculture crops, either barely holds carbon or actively releases it. Shallow-rooted grass, constant grazing, soil disturbance all limits how much carbon can actually be stored. Regenerative systems flip that. Here, they’re building carbon through complexity. Deep-rooted plants. Trees. Fungi. Worm systems. Organic matter layered intentionally through nitrogen and carbon mixing. They’re literally creating what they call “black gold”, a compost so rich it’s valued at nearly double standard compost prices. Made through a mix of silage (nitrogen), wood chip (carbon), worms, and oyster mushroom spores, which break everything down at speed.
It’s not waste. It’s fuel for the system. And once you understand it, it feels so obvious. Of course ecosystems are circular. Of course nothing should leave the system. Of course soil health is everything. But we’ve built entire industries that ignore that. Even the way they manage sheep is different. Instead of leaving them to graze continuously, they rotate them across 26 blocks of land. Short, controlled grazing periods, then moving them on, allowing the grass to recover and grow deeper roots.
Because, as I’ve reiterated several times, here’s something, once again, I genuinely did not know: the length of the grass above ground reflects the depth of the roots below it. Short grass equals shallow roots, which means less carbon storage. And all those gorgeous, glowing, green fields you drive by on the motorway and think “wow how beautiful is the countryside” (guilty) are all pumping chemicals into their shallow rooted grass to get it to grow faster so they can fatten up their sheep faster. Let that sink in. So by simply giving grass time to grow, you’re increasing the land’s ability to capture carbon. And this is where the difference between sustainable and regenerative really hits.
Sustainability, as we know it, often focuses on reducing harm. Using less. Wasting less. Emitting less. Regeneration is about actively improving systems. Increasing biodiversity. Building carbon. Restoring ecosystems. It’s not about doing less damage. It’s about doing more good. And honestly, being there made me realise how much of the sustainable industry is still operating in that “less bad” mindset. We celebrate small wins. Slight reductions. Marginal improvements. Meanwhile, places like this are completely redesigning the system.
Another layer to this is the economic model, which is where it gets even more interesting. Because this isn’t just an environmental project. It’s financially viable. There are entire markets now built around carbon and biodiversity. If land can demonstrably store carbon or increase biodiversity, that value can be sold. Companies that are failing to meet emissions targets are essentially paying into these systems.
Carbon, at its core, is just broken-down living matter. Everything from wood to microorganisms. Even oil, which completely shifted my perspective, is largely ancient biological material compressed over millions of years. And now we’re extracting that carbon at scale, while simultaneously destroying the systems that naturally store it. It’s backwards. What Regenfuture Co is doing is rebuilding that storage capacity, but in real time. They’ve partnered with companies like Dawson’s for wool processing, creating circular textile loops and work with Levy, a massive food and hospitality group, to rethink supply chains and emissions. There are connections to major venues, from Wimbledon to Premier League clubs, where produce and ingredients from regenerative systems are being integrated into high-end food experiences. It’s not niche. It’s scalable. And that’s what makes it powerful. Because this isn’t about creating a “perfect” farm in isolation. It’s about proving that this model can work, financially and practically, across the UK and beyond.
Even the smallest details on the farm reflect this thinking. They use the processed wool as a natural filtration system for water. They plant specific trees to feed wildlife away from crops, reducing damage without harming ecosystems. They test multiple plant varieties in baseline blocks to see what actually survives in that specific environment before scaling it. They mimic forest ecosystems through agroforestry, layering crops in multiple levels to maximise productivity and resilience. Nothing is random. Everything is intentional. And yet, it doesn’t feel forced. Because the entire system is built around working with nature, not against it.
I think what hit me the most (although I have said this time and time again), was how little I knew before stepping onto that farm. I’ve built a career around sustainability. I run a brand. I run a platform. I talk about circularity all the time. And yet, I had never properly understood soil. I had never understood carbon beyond emissions. I had never seen sustainability actually functioning as a fully closed, living system. It made me realise that a lot of what we talk about in the sustainable space is still quite surface-level. Important, yes. But not transformative.
Seeing regeneration in practice changes that. It shows you what’s actually possible when you stop thinking in products and start thinking in systems. It shows you that the future of sustainability isn’t just better materials or improved supply chains. It’s entirely new ways of designing how we live, produce, and consume. And more than anything, it made me realise that we’re only scratching the surface.
If this is what’s possible on 92 acres in Yorkshire, imagine what could happen if this thinking was applied at scale. Across the UK. Across industries. Across everything. Regenfuture Co isn’t just evolving farming. It’s quietly redefining how we sustain ourselves as a society. And after seeing it firsthand, I can’t unsee it.
Everyone should have the opportunity to see and experience what Regenfuture Co is doing. And if Dr Vincent tells you to bring wellies, make sure you listen!