Now there’s a better way

You want to do more for the environment but you’re also responsible for running your business and supporting your family.

So you have to make it pay.

As an EnTrade farmer, you can earn money by improving your local environment.

Profitability and sound environmental stewardship are not a zero-sum game. Work with us to develop new markets for environmental improvements, and grow your bottom line while helping your local environment.

- Guy Thompson, Managing Director

Commercial deals for nature

EnTrade offers farmers new ways to make money with opportunities for diversification and use of less productive land, backed by reliable payments and limited or no requirement for upfront capital.

We design marketplaces for farmers to be paid by water companies, developers, local authorities and businesses in transport, energy, manufacturing and construction. These payments can be for land use changes that you weave into existing rotations (eg cover crops), require new features to be built (eg ponds or buffer strips) or sometimes for longer-term changes(eg woodland creation or arable reversion).

Getting involved is straightforward and involves no commitment on your part until the contracts are prepared for you to sign, at the end of the market process.

Here’s a basic overview of how it works:

· Register your details on the EnTrade platform registration page to create an account (see below)

· Find out about market events in your area via our website, newsletter or local marketing campaigns

· Read about requirements, eligibility and draft contract terms for projects being bought in the market

· Talk to local advisers appointed to support the market

· Start thinking about projects you could submit when the time window (usually 3 or 4 weeks) for bidding is open

· Enter project proposals with your price requirements, using the simple online platform

· Track your bids on the platform, and via email alerts, to see if it is a “winning” bid

· Revise your bids if you are informed that its price is no longer competitive

· At close of auction, receive draft contracts for signing if you had a winning bid

· If you did not win – bad luck - think about different bids for future events

For more information on how things work, see one of our case studies.

Case studies

Join us and be a part of the change

As with any marketplace, the more sellers there are, the more buyers will be attracted. So, even if there are no live markets in prospect for your county right now, it is worth registering, as we can summarise the level of interest we have from farmers in an area to tempt buyers to market.

If you’re interested in new ways to make money and increase the profitability of your farm, we invite you to register your interest in participating in EnTrade marketplaces in the future. Registration takes just a few minutes, and there’s no obligation or cost.

Enduring vs permanent land-use change

A more adaptable solution to nutrient-neutral development? Many parts of England’s most highly prized and protected water environments are damaged by nitrogen and phosphorus, nutrients released in excess of nature’s needs despite well-managed farming and billions of pounds of investment in sewage works .

What is a market

Where I grew up in rural Norfolk, the market would come to town every Wednesday. This was a place where people come together to buy and sell pretty much everything. The meat and veg for the Sunday Roast, a second hand copy of some pulp fiction novel or (my own personal favourite) a bag of hard boiled sweets with enough E-numbers to sink a battle ship.

A view from a window

There is nothing quite like empty shelves in the supermarket to remind people of the importance of food production. And, as borders close and international freight becomes restricted our underlying dependency on the British countryside is laid bare.