Our standards
The Farm Wilder approach to beef and sheep production is to better integrate them into the natural environment, for the benefit of the animals, farmers, consumers, and wildlife. We recognise the crucial role of these animals in maintaining and restoring important habitats for wildlife, regenerating soils and providing nutrient dense food for human consumption.
Our standards are how we make sure this ethos is applied across all our suppliers. They have been designed to ensure that each farm provides the cornerstones of healthy ecosystems, and is managed to actively regenerate their environment without creating problems further afield.
Rare and Endangered Wildlife: All Farm Wilder produce is raised on farms that are managing or actively restoring priority farmland habitats, such as species rich grasslands, wood pasture or wildlife rich heathland, which offer crucial nesting resources for rare and endangered wildlife such as cuckoos and marsh fritillary butterflies. These are habitats which that rely on grazing animals for their conservation.
Habitat Features: Healthy ecosystems and abundant farm wildlife require not just more wildflowers and healthy soils, but a mixed and messy landscape of trees, hedges, scrub, rough grasslands, wetlands and water features. Our standards require that farmers provide these features throughout the farmed landscape.
100% Pasture-fed: We require that all ruminant livestock sold to Farm Wilder are produced on a 100% pasture fed diet across their entire lifecycle. This means that beef cattle and sheep receive only vegetation that forms their natural diet, predominantly grasses and herbs, and not the grains and other concentrate feeds which increasingly dominate livestock production but come at high cost to the environment, to the quality of the produce and to animal welfare.
Soil Health and Organic Carbon: A diverse, grazed landscape has the potential to store massive amounts of carbon, which in turn supports abundant microbiological life, stores vastly more water, and helps combat climate change. We require that all our farmers develop management plans to increase organic carbon in their soils and monitor the change.
Regenerative farm planning: All our producers create and regularly review a farm regenerative plan with the support of a Farm Wilder advisor. This details how healthy and diverse ecosystems are built into their farm systems, and identifies how habitats and soils will be improved.