Make a donation

Help fund our work to amplify nature-friendly farming’s benefits to farmers and policymakers across the UK

Policy & Views

Read a variety of articles, including topical blogs, comment pieces on policy developments and updates on key moments in farming.

Campaigns

Catch up with our latest campaigns and find out more about our work.

Farm Practices

Explore information on many aspects of nature-friendly farm practices.

What is the NFFN?

Discover our mission, our vision and the challenge we meet.

Meet The Team

Meet the farmers in our regional steering groups and the staff team at our core

FAQs

Got a question about nature-friendly farming? We've got it covered here

Supporters

We're proud to work with many organisations who support our mission.
Farmer Stories

Abby Allen - Pioneering shortened supply chains for nature-friendly farmed food

England
Case Study
supply chain
Livestock
Mixed

All photos: Joanne Coates © for the Nature Friendly Farming Network

Pipers Farm works directly with a network of 50 small, independent, family-run farms based predominantly across South West England but more recently spreading across the country. Each small-scale farm rears high-quality meat using nature-friendly practices. At the heart of Pipers Farm is the belief that livestock should be reared ‘in harmony with nature’. It champions pasture-fed, native breeds and passionately campaigns for small-scale abattoirs.

At the centre of the operation is a 50-acre pasture farm in Mid Devon grazing native Red Ruby cattle and a small flock of sheep. It's home to founders Peter and Henri Greig, who set up Pipers Farm in 1989 as a reaction to the increasing industrialisation of farming in the late ‘80s. Today, Pipers Farm is run by Peter and Henri’s son Will and his partner Abby Allen, who is the director of farming and has the job of ensuring a consistent, sustainable approach in line with the business’ values across all of its farms.

One of the real cornerstones of Pipers Farm is that one of our co-founders, Peter, grew up in Kent when there were lots of neighbouring family farms, with one person milking some Jersey cows and another growing some beautiful vegetables. In the time he had been away and come home again, they had all gone. All that small-scale mixed enterprise farming had disappeared. To set up a business that champions small-scale farming and nature, they needed to find somewhere that tapestry of small-scale mixed farming still existed, and they found a thriving network in Devon.

Abby Allen

Abby, who is not from a farming background but grew up surrounded by agriculture in rural Devon, initially came to Pipers for a job interview with a background in sales and marketing. She says she could immediately see Pipers Farm's growth potential, as it now delivers more than 80,000 boxes around the country each year.

“I could really see myself creating a brand and building a following,” she said. “There was something about it that was magical. I could see what they needed to do to grow the business and got really excited about the idea I could help them with that.”

At the root of Pipers’ approach to managing its network of small farms across England is the idea that each one is unique and needs to do what is suitable for its landscape. The Pipers Farm tapestry of farms covers a wide variety of landscapes, ranging from upland grazing in areas such as Exmoor and Dartmoor to lush lowland grassland in Devon, Dorset and Somerset to mixed farming enterprises. 

“Our network has quite a mix of farms, and each one has to farm in harmony with nature, so we have to look at what makes sense in that landscape,” Abby says. In appropriate landscapes, nature-friendly farming methods such as mob grazing cattle and sheep are encouraged, but each farm must be considered individually.

“We’ve got a farm with 3,000 acres of wild conservation grazing on Dartmoor that has a high footfall of tourists,” she says. “We have another farm on National Trust land with fields running right along a cliff edge that’s home to a breeding herd of Devons. Both have permissive access rights and footpaths running like veins through the fields. Mob grazing in those two conservation landscapes would be an absolute nightmare and not what is useful there, so we favour extensive grazing with long rest periods instead.”

Abby is passionate about celebrating the varied stories and the innovative sustainable approaches taken by the farms she works with. One farm rearing native-breed pigs is a short drive from a small food production site that packages nuts, dried fruit, and seeds for supermarkets. The factory produces vast amounts of highly nutritious food that's discarded by the retailers due to being wonky or damaged, so the pigs are the beneficiaries and enjoy the likes of macadamia nuts and dried fruit as an addition to their diet. 

Working at Pipers Farm sometimes means being able to celebrate people who have been ploughing a lonely furrow in the nature-friendly field for many years.

“I brought into our network a couple who live in a part of Devon surrounded by industrial mega-sheds,” Abby says. “I drove down their bumpy farm track, and it was like a little slice of heaven. They had hedges 12 feet tall and six metres wide, the most incredible Devon cattle grazing diverse pasture, and the ground was just buzzing with skylarks. They’ve spent almost their whole lives farming this way, with their neighbours telling them they were wasting their time and they should put up sheds and spray the fields. They said no, and they’ve both stuck to their commitment to carefully managing their land. They weren’t being respected for the incredible job they’ve done. Before they connected with us, they would send their beautiful livestock to an abattoir where it would go into a homogenised food chain and be sold at whatever price the market was demanding that week, with no value for the love and care they had lavished on their livestock. It’s a real privilege to be able to join up their amazing produce with our customers who truly value what they have produced.”

While farming approaches must be suitable to local landscapes, there are nevertheless a number of values Pipers likes to see among its suppliers. One is a commitment to soil health, something instilled by founders Peter and Henri, who were ahead of their time in understanding the importance of monitoring the positive impact of grazing livestock. 

I would like to show young girls that you can be a woman from a non-farming background and make a difference. I would never want a young girl to think that farming wasn’t for her or that it’s a club she isn’t allowed in. I feel strongly that anyone can do this; you don’t have to have a farming background. If you have passion and commitment, you can make a difference.

Abby Allen

Another is securing the future of native breeds. “During the 1980s, ‘90s and 2000s, there was massive homogenisation of the food chain,” Abby says. “So many native breeds were put on the red list and nearly lost. It was all about producing bigger carcasses faster. We only sell native breed cattle, pigs, turkeys and so on. It’s about animals that have a symbiotic relationship with their landscape, eating food that’s natural to their digestive system which then produces healthy dung which can be cycled back into the landscape.”

Pipers does not demand that its farms sign up to any particular certification scheme, though Abby does encourage Pasture for Life accreditation and likes farms to join the Slow Food movement. As a business focused on getting good-quality food into consumers’ hands, Abby admits the proliferation of certificates and logos is not always helpful. “We're always asking what is going to float customers’ boats and get them eating nature-friendly food,” she says. “Our years of experience show us time and again that people actually find certification more off-putting than encouraging because they are just confused by what it all means.”

Abby’s role means she spends a good deal of time thinking about nature-friendly food in a way that doesn’t stop at the farm gate but extends all the way to getting quality, sustainably-made produce onto people’s plates. “It’s all well and good getting us all to farm this way, but you have to get the customers as engaged as the farmers,” she says. “We need people to really understand the difference between food produced in harmony with nature and factory farming, so they understand how to truly value the incredible resource of the small-scale family farm.”