Avoiding the regen ag ‘J curve’ on the Waitrose farm

How the Leckford Estate prevented yields from dipping at the start of its agricultural transition.

The Leckford Estate, owned and managed by the John Lewis Partnership, is a large mixed farm in Hampshire that farms 750 of its 1,150 hectares. It has arable crops, a suckler beef herd, orchards and vineyards. Ingredients grown on the farm go into products stocked in Waitrose shops across the UK and it began implementing a regenerative agriculture management plan in 2020.

The supermarket has a Farming for Nature programme which aims to ensure all the UK farms supplying it have started adopting regenerative farming practices by 2030. Its own farm is at the heart of the programme, trialling regenerative practices and sharing insights across its farming community. Particular attention has been given to the question: how can the transition avoid what is known as the regenerative agriculture ‘J curve’?

The basics - what is the regen ag J curve?

There is a widely held assumption that when regenerative practices are first adopted, a farm will immediately see a substantial decrease in yield and profit. Some claim it could take up to five years for a regeneratively managed farm to return to previous levels of output and profitability. This is known as the J curve, or ‘hockey stick’, because when plotted on a graph with time on the horizontal axis and profitability on the vertical axis, it resembles the letter J tilted at an angle.

With farmers operating on tight margins in a challenging sector, this perception can create doubt among those considering more nature-friendly ways of working. Leckford was determined to demonstrate that a large-scale mixed farming operation could remain both profitable and productive while taking this approach.

How did Leckford set about avoiding the J curve?

Leckford took a pragmatic approach to the transition, while honouring the principles of regenerative farming. This meant identifying which principles best suited the estate and could therefore be implemented first. It avoided the pressure to make drastic changes, such as moving straight to no-till, for example.

Instead, the estate drew up a bespoke transition plan and gave the team five years to carry it out. By 2020, when the plan was put in place, the estate had already trialled herbal leys and bought a hybrid drill to move from min-till to strip-till.

A 12-year rotation, including the integration of livestock across all arable areas of the farm, was the first step. This began with three years of herbal leys, followed by winter wheat, winter oilseed rape, spring oats and peas, and spring barley. The rotation also includes companion cropping and the use of cover and catch crops, all of which had to be embedded as those years came up in the sequence.

In 2021, the farm electromagnetically scanned all its fields to build up an accurate picture of the variations in its soil types, while also ensuring its beef cattle were fed a diet of 100% homegrown feed and forage.

In 2022, the farm carried out extensive soil sampling for nutrient testing and purchased a six-metre shallow disc cultivator with a seeder to make sowing cover crops and herbal leys easier and more efficient. The following year, molasses were added to arable crops alongside liquid fertiliser, while the use of pesticides and insecticides were reduced. In 2023, herbicides were also eliminated from the estate’s orchards and vineyards, and direct drilling for winter wheat began.

The suckler beef herd was switched to a mob grazing programme in 2024, while sap testing on wheat began to enable more efficient use of nitrogen fertiliser. Pesticidal seed treatments were also removed from the farming system.

What was the result?

Following a gradual approach to adopting regen principles, guided by extensive data collection, Leckford did not experience the ‘J curve’. Profits did not decline during the transition, and clear benefits from the changes were seen within a couple of years.

The arable operation saw an increase in yields as soil organic matter increased. The farm tested a 25-hectare block of barley when soil organic matter was at 4.5% and then again, when it had reached 7.5%. The latter yielded an additional four tonnes of barley per hectare, demonstrating the clear business benefits of improved soil health.

The suckler beef operation has also seen direct financial benefits. Switching to herbal leys is thought to have saved around £140 per hectare through a combination of reduced inputs (nitrogen fertiliser use on the leys has been reduced to virtually zero), no decline in forage production, and a reduced need for health treatments and interventions. The farm has also benefitted from payments through options in the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

What happens next?

Five years into the transition, Leckford says it has identified measurable improvements across all of its outcome areas. For the estate, it is not just about profit and yield, but also achieving better outcomes for soil health, biodiversity, livestock welfare, water quality and climate mitigation. Regular soil testing shows that soil organic matter is increasing by an average of 0.1% per year.

While synthetic pesticides and fertilisers are still some way from being eliminated completely at Leckford, the improvements seen to date are motivating the estate to go further in its regen journey.

In reality, the estate’s team has come to realise that there is no end point to the processes of environmental and economic regeneration. They are pleased to be leading the change, while recognising they don’t have all the answers, and continuing to share their insights with others.

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