LENs Company Ltd has announced the launch of Trade 2025 for LENs England – a window for applications for significant funding opportunities for regenerative farming and nature-based solutions – in Yorkshire and the East of England. Running until 3rd March 2025, LENs England’s Trade 2025 opens for applications in the New Year for participating supply-chain partners.
The first phase of Trade 2025 is aimed at participating supply-chain partners, and will then be followed by a window for farmer applications.
LENs says that it welcomes applications from farmers that do business with 2025 LENs supply aggregators or are located in critical water catchments. The company says that the supply side can work best when coordinated through ‘supply aggregators’, who help land enterprises to work together as a group and create a joined-up proposition.
A LENs spokesperson said, “The LENs team is responsible for analysing and offering trade packages, which enables focused discussions on verifying and checking the proposed outcomes from suggested funded projects. In order to clearly align with targets, the LENs team will propose relevant packages of measures to each farmer, based on the outcomes demand partners are seeking. The measures involve changes to farmland use and land-management practices, which lead to healthy productive soils, thriving biodiversity and other beneficial outcomes. This approach makes it easy to identify areas where measures can be ‘stacked’ to align with other LENs partners, as well as with public funds.
“LENs England’s Trade 2025 provides a opportunity for organisations participating in LENs to join forces, with the common goal of ensuring that soils, farms, livelihoods and landscapes deliver what society and businesses need. Ultimately, the Trade will see funding allocated to eligible farmers.
“The trading process offers an opportunity for participating organisations to understand the needs of the relevant businesses involved, and convene those businesses around common interests, which include thriving biodiversity and pollinators on farms, healthy productive soils, increased natural flood management, resilience to pests and disease, adapting to climate variability and extreme weather events, reduced reliance on synthetic inputs, and reduced nutrient run-off in watercourses. The process will also build a technical understanding of the common requirements from the landscape.
“Above all, it’s a chance for businesses to engage service providers – operating on behalf of farmers – to design and cost service offerings and interventions that meets the needs of each business.”
Crucially, the Trade also includes newly updated technical guidance from LENs (Landscape Enterprise Networks). The new guidance not only helps to enable funding opportunities, but ensures a sharp focus on outcomes and increases support for farmers on their journey from conventional to regenerative farming practices.
Isabel Ross, Principal Consultant at LENs, said, “With successful LENs England projects well underway in Yorkshire and the East of England, LENs projects have already proved highly effective at building business partnerships for resilient landscapes. So I’m delighted to announce the launch of LENs England’s Trade 2025 this week to supply-chain partners.
“Over the past year, the LENs team has been busy working with funding partners, supply aggregators and farmers to ensure Trade 2025 is optimised to focus on outcomes for demand-side partners and to enable an even greater focus on impact.
“As well as opening the door to increased funding for regenerative farmers, Trade 2025 represents a significant opportunity to improve the health, resilience and productivity of our landscapes.”
In October, LENs Company Ltd announced the beginning of a new phase of rapid scaling for Landscape Enterprise Networks, with the programme already helping to boost the health and resilience of landscapes across the UK and Europe.
Founded by sustainability consultancy 3Keel, LENs brings together businesses, public bodies, NGOs, farmers and land managers to finance and implement initiatives that ensure the landscapes in their region thrive and continue to meet the needs of businesses, land enterprises, communities and nature.
Some of the most significant outcomes of LENs measures include mitigating flood risk, promoting soil health, creating habitats for pollinators, boosting biodiversity and increasing soil carbon.
LENs England’s Trade 2025 opens for applications in the New Year for participating supply-chain partners and will run until 3rd March 2025.