A great turnout to EFG’s bright and early Third Members meeting with over 75 farmers in attendance. These mornings give the opportunity for Members to come together to share information on the Natural Capital sector and learn how the EFG is progressing (as well as a catch up over tea and bacon rolls).
EFG Board Member, Matt Fry, chaired the event and gave an update on EFG’s progress with Membership growth. We learnt that the EFG has grown nearly a third since its last meeting in July, taking its total signed up Members to 96, covering 41,000ha.
NCA Managing Director, Christopher Sparrow, gave an update on where EFG now is with trading, running through examples of how the first trades of the group have evolved as well as pointing out the priorities over the next quarter. These include the delivery of a Members Portal for sharing knowledge and increased promotion of the group to the developer market.
Sarah Humphries, Partner at Trethowans (an EFG sponsor), delivered a talk on the legal principles of trading ecosystem services. Sarah was followed by another EFG sponsor – Old Mill Accountants. Andrew Vickery, Head of Rural, spoke to the audience on tax and what sort of considerations needed to be made before entering into any ecosystem trade.
Biodiversity Baseline Audits are now well underway with EFG Members and so Amber Lole of the GWCT updated Members on how the audits work and how this information can be used for attracting trades.
Teresa Dent CBE, Chief Executive of the GWCT was the final speaker and rounded up the day with a look to how EFG can influence through its size and how it is the perfect vehicle to be able to deliver the environmental change at scale that we need.
The event closed with a range of interesting questions from the audience, including how landlord-tenant relationships might work with trading, how trades will be distributed among EFG Members and how natural capital trades will work alongside agri-environment schemes such as ELMS.