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Farmer Stories

Tom Pearson - Regeneration, research and resilience at a Cambridgeshire arable farm

England
Case Study
arable
climate change
Crops
Market garden
pesticide reduction
regenerative farming
soil health
agroforestry

Manor Farm, lying 10 miles west of Cambridge city centre in the village of Caxton, is a 600-hectare arable farming business. Some of this land has been in Tom Pearson’s family since the 1680s, though he is a third-generation farmer after ownership passed to his grandfather in the 1950s. Under his stewardship, the farm is moving to the next stage of its journey to become more nature-friendly.

Tom was interested in farming growing up, helping with harvests as a teenager, but the business wasn’t able to pay him and his dad. He studied medicine in Edinburgh before working in the NHS as a hospital doctor and GP, and later abroad in the humanitarian aid sector. In 2015, he returned to the farm to take up the reins.

Tom’s dad farmed in a fairly conventional way, but made space for nature, with Manor Farm entering some of the earliest agri-environmental schemes in England. Hedgerows were retained rather than grubbed out, tree planting was a regular winter job and field margins were established. By the time he took over, however, Tom had decided he wanted to fully embrace working with nature and started transitioning towards a fully regenerative approach.

“As I didn’t have any formal agricultural training, I was looking at courses to improve my knowledge when I took over the farm,” Tom recalls. “This happened to be a time when soil health and regenerative agriculture were being talked about, so that became the focus of many of the farm walks and short courses I attended. I also started going to Groundswell and joined BASE UK. My work in medicine had made me very aware of the importance of nature for people’s mental and physical wellbeing.”

Initially the farm’s long-serving staff were sceptical of Tom’s regenerative enthusiasm, but he persuaded the team to adopt a direct drill, as it helped tackle blackgrass by minimising soil disturbance during spring drilling. This also allowed Tom to begin experimenting with cover cropping, at a time when many were still unsure it would work on heavy clay soils.

“I think I wanted to make my mark on the farm, but I was also keenly aware that we are in a nature and climate crisis, and that I was one of the comparatively few people who, as a landowner, could make a real positive impact on the ground,” he says. “I was hellbent on making regen work on our farm.”

For the first few years, Tom and his team trialled the new approach, starting with around 30 hectares and building up gradually. He was aware that, to realise the full benefits of regenerative farming, he would need to commit for the long term, as the cumulative effects of allowing the soil to self-structure and increasing organic matter and biology would build over time. “A lot of farmers struggle to adopt regen because they try one or two regenerative principles for a year or two, compare it directly to their more intensive systems, and then stop. You need to play the long game, embracing all the principles,” he says.

Tom immediately stopped using insecticides after research showed that the flea beetles on the farm were 100% resistant to the chemicals he would have used. He also reduced diesel use by between 40% and 50% by stopping cultivation. However, the next stage - reducing inputs further - was a more delicate balancing act.

“You realise nitrogen is not the friend you thought it was and reducing it is your big win, both financially and environmentally,” Tom says. “You’re looking for nature to do the work for you, so worms and deep-rooting covers will essentially do the job of cultivating machinery, while inputs like nitrogen slow the process of improving your soil health.  All the time, you are balancing this against keeping your farm profitable. That’s the gamble at the heart of regenerative agriculture.”

You're looking for nature to do the work for you, so worms and deep-rooting covers will essentially do the job of cultivating machinery, while inputs like nitrogen slow the process of improving your soil health

Tom Pearson

Tom has managed to reduce fertiliser use by around 40%, though he acknowledges that they initially cut early nitrogen applications too quickly, and the crops struggled in dry periods. Anecdotally, Tom says the cracks in his clay soils are a useful yardstick of the progress made. “ I used to be able to put my arm down cracks in the ground, all the way to my shoulder! But when it was very dry in 2025 I could only get my fingers into these soil cracks,” he says.

Manor Farm does not have set crop rotations, but aims to maintain around 50% winter wheat due to its reliable gross margin for East Anglian farms. The farm also grows spring barley and oats, and Tom has increased the proportion of spring cropping from 4% to between 35% and 40%. This gives more of the land the opportunity to support diverse cover crops and reduced inputs. He has also brought legumes back into the rotation and remains open to trying more unusual crops for the area, such as linseed, soya and peas. In 2026,  he began planting ancient grains sourced from seed banks, keen to explore their potential soil benefits through improved rooting and mycorrhizal associations. Monocropping has been almost entirely replaced with a policy of aiming for 100% companion cropping.

“Our mantra is ‘living roots and diversity’. We aim to maintain living roots in the soil all year round, or as close to that as possible, and these roots need to be diverse, both across species and within species,” Tom says. “We will be growing five-way blends of wheat varieties, but in the field we might also have a perennial understory of microclover, or a companion crop that we might spray off or take through to harvest. Unfortunately, separating crops after harvest comes at a cost, and this is not a cost-effective option at the moment, but we are working on it.”

Our mantra is 'living roots and diversity'. We aim to maintain living roots in the soil all year round, or as close to that as possible, and these roots need to be diverse.

Tom Pearson

One hectare is home to Sweetpea Market Garden, one of several land-sharing initiatives Tom has created on the farm. Sweetpea grows a wide range of vegetables and sits alongside a field of dessert apples, where the farm is branching out into agroforestry. “This really opens an arable farmer’s eyes to the world and potential of shorter supply chains,” Tom says. “It has got me thinking about the added value our products have, such as carbon, nature, water quality and potentially nutrition, which embedded commodity systems really struggle to capture and reward. As a doctor focused on primary care and public health, it also builds on my drive for equitable access to food with wider health benefits, a topic I studied during my Nuffield farming scholarship.”

Research is also a central part of Manor Farm’s regenerative development. Tom has now been joined on site by Rhys Jones as farm manager and Shona Russell as data and research lead for regenerative farming. The farm is part of the NUTRIGROW project, supported by the NFFN, which aims to provide farmers with in-depth soil analysis and guidance on beneficial practices. They are also the lead farm in an ADOPT project exploring nitrogen use efficiency and plant health through ‘reactive agronomy’ and foliar nitrogen application (where nitrogen is taken up directly through the plants’ leaves). The team was also heavily involved in the H3 research project (healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people) which has recently come to a close. This included a five-year, in-depth study of regenerative agriculture’s impact on nature and soil health at a landscape level.

Tom admits his medical background has influenced his approach to farm research. “Medicine lives and breathes evidence-based approaches, so I’m very comfortable with critically appraising research and I see the value of getting involved in on-farm research. I also want to make this an exciting place to work, and with Rhys and Shona on board, we’ve now got three of us who are all very interested in research and knowledge exchange.”

Manor Farm tries to have around five research projects under way at any one time, and Tom is keen to make this part of the business model. “I’d like income from these projects to be able to fund a portion of staff time,” he says. “We will always employ a minimum of two people on this farm, because having fewer than that isn’t practical or safe. It’s my job to make that work financially, and I think research fits in well.”

Having increased space for nature on the farm from around 4% to 11%, Tom is looking to raise this to 15% by introducing grass margins and hedgerows on the most recently acquired block. Ultimately, he wants his nature-friendly approach to blur the distinction between farmland and land managed for nature, so that cropped areas also provide high-quality habitat. 

However, even his most positive experiences with on-farm biodiversity have been something of a double-edged sword. “I took staff from the local wildlife trust into a wheat field and the microclover was in flower, so there were thousands of pollinators buzzing around,” Tom recalls. “They were really encouraged to see this pollinator service being delivered in-field, but unfortunately the microclover then outcompeted the wheat for water in a drought, so our yield dropped. We’re trying lots of things and spreading the risk by not doing it everywhere. Nature likes diversity and I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution, even within a single farm.”

Tom is also thinking beyond the farm gate, as he chairs the local West Cambridgeshire Hundreds farm cluster, which is working to create nature corridors between habitats, recognising that nature needs to move beyond individual farm boundaries.  Connectivity with people is also important at Manor Farm, with around eight kilometres of footpaths, bridleways and permissive paths crossing the land. “Making space for nature and people is a careful balancing act, but the community health benefits of getting this right are worth it,” Tom says.

With the impacts of climate change increasingly being felt on farms, Tom has no doubt that his approach will help Manor Farm remain viable into the future. “Scientifically, it’s obvious we need to pump more carbon into our soils,” he says. “The combination of better soil structure, increased carbon, biology and water-holding capacity is what will lead to climate resilience. I’m thinking carefully about what things will be like in 30 years,  and I strongly believe this way of farming will continue to deliver resilient soils and nature on this land. It’s about investing in your greatest asset, which is your soil.”

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