New Foundation Farms Ltd and 5 Deep Limited have come together to create an organisation that can support a scaled transformation to regenerative farming and land management.
5 Deep’s Land and Livestock Management for Life (3LM) division – an accredited Hub of the Savory Institute’s Global Network representing the UK and Ireland – will become part of New Foundation Farms (NFF) as will its Bart software platform. Christopher and Sheila Cooke will join NFF’s board of directors and Sheila will become a co-CEO of NFF.
NFF co-founder Mark Drewell said, “This is about two organisations deciding to create greater impact by coming together. If the 20th century was all about competition and the green revolution focussed on yield powered by chemicals, the 21st century is all about collaboration and health: healthy food produced in healthy ecosystems by healthy farm businesses.”
3LM are leading experts in nature-based regenerative farming and land management. They have developed a powerful software system called Bart which digitises ecological health assessment and reporting, which is starting to be licensed around the world to other Savory hubs for Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) land monitoring.
NFF brings skills in enterprise design, planning, development and finance to transform the food and farming sector. The two organisations are merging to combine ecological literacy with artificial intelligence in order to accelerate and scale the regeneration of soils through the production of food and fibre.
Commenting on the deal for 5 Deep, Christopher Cooke said, “We are delighted to join forces with NFF. We have spent ten years developing 3LM and Bart to the point where we are ready to scale, and the team at NFF are the right people for us to work with to make that happen. We share the ideals of mutuality, reciprocity, regeneration and abundance, and see the potential to move beyond incremental change to a new paradigm informed by holistic approaches to build better farming businesses.”
New Foundation Farms under the 3LM brand will continue to serve as an accredited Savory Hub equipping UK and Irish farming clients with the Savory Institute’s gold standard programmes of Holistic Management education and mentoring, Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) land monitoring, and Land to Market supply chain support. NFF is injecting resources to support the growth of the existing business.
This deal, which has taken place for an undisclosed sum, is a sign of the growing maturity of regenerative agriculture businesses. It is one of the first examples of two companies combining forces through a corporate M&A integration.
Drewell said, “This is just the start. It’s about nature, health, resilience and sovereignty in our food system as a new foundation for a better world in which we humans can move from destroying the natural world, to being a positive keystone species that helps all life flourish on our planet.”