Richard Allan

Trustee

Richard farms with his wife on a small family farm in West Wiltshire.  It is a grass-based livestock farm with sheep, cattle and pigs and with c. 6 acres of top uit and nut orchards. They currently run a local meat-box scheme and supply top fruit and meat to local outlets.  The farm is participating in a number of funded biodiversity schemes including re-establishing a network of connected wetlands and planting rotational wood pasture (using multi-paddock grazing techniques).

Alongside farming, Richard has worked for a short spell as a botanist, then in the military and for the last 20 years in industry.  He is a qualified solicitor and currently works as General Counsel for a FTSE Green Economy manufacturing company that is addressing the need to accelerate the move towards carbon neutrality for an international footprint. A biologist by training, Richard has a particular interest in the challenges and opportunities presented by the move to carbon neutrality and the greater focus on restoring biodiversity - and with the potential opportunity they offer for the organic movement and for agroecology more generally to rebalance land use and management in the UK.

Richard is the Trustees’ nominated representative on the Soil Association's Farmer & Grower Board and is also a non-executive director of an industrial-disease compensation fund for victims of asbestos-related disease.