How partnerships can allow farmers to find resilience

British farming is under real pressure. Commodity prices are weak, input costs (fuel and fertiliser especially) remain punishing, and margins are thinner than they've been in years. This follows five bruising years for all of us, but farmers especially: pandemic disruption, the Ukraine shock, ongoing instability in the Middle East. Farmers are absorbing hit after hit with little room left to manoeuvre.

And yet the supply chain has both the means and the motive to help. Farming's resilience is their resilience. Healthy soils, stable yields, reduced input dependency — these aren't just good for farmers, they're the foundation of a functioning food system.

What farmers need isn't charity, or more people telling them what to do. It's commercial partnership. Funding to trial practices they already know make sense — reducing fertiliser inputs, improving soil health, restoring biodiversity — but can't afford to risk in a difficult season. The barrier isn't knowledge or willingness. It's that trying something new when margins are this tight can sink a business.

This is why we set up Exchange Market as one answer: pooling supply chain funding and putting it directly in farmers' hands, through short-term, flexible agreements with upfront farm funding payments. This kind of farm funding gives farmers the runway to change. And Businesses get genuine on-farm impact. Reductions in inputs like nitrogen, changes to cultivation approaches or different ways to manage crop residues can be tested cautiously in ways that works for the farm business. And British farming gets more resilience against whatever comes next.

This is what genuine supply chain partnership looks like. Farmers are already adapting fast — it's time for the broader supply chain to step up and help build the resilient, sustainable farming sector we all need.

This letter from Soil Association Exchange CEO Joseph Gridley first appeared in print in Farmers Weekly in April 2026.