John Gilliland is a sixth-generation UK farmer and advocate for sustainable agriculture with a legacy in policy, academia, and innovation. As a leader of the ARC Zero project, his own farm is a model for “Beyond” Net Zero practices, where willow cultivation, livestock grazing, and renewable energy initiatives work together in a circular system.

He has credits he could sell tomorrow and hasn’t sold any. The reason cuts to the heart of the whole carbon market: on the voluntary market, he says, the same people who measure your soil also buy your credits. They are judge and jury in one. Until that changes, his carbon stays in the ground.

We get into why his 250-year-old woodland — kept fenced off from animals for most of its life — has no earthworms, a soil pH of 4.8, and trees toppling in storms, while feeding willow leaves to his cattle has cut their methane by 28%. John walks us through the fertiliser crisis he thinks is bigger than the Ukraine war, the chicory root he uses instead of a diesel subsoiler, and a 36-hectare trial that lifted meat output 83% while cutting nitrogen 65%.