Bioregional Regeneration: The Role of Farm Cluster Groups in Transitions Towards Agroecology

Summary Thesis

Condensed from dissertation research by Hamish Evans, Centre for Agroecology, Water & Resilience, Coventry University — November 2025

Abstract

This report summarises dissertation research examining the role of farm cluster groups in transitions towards agroecological food and farming systems, using the Avon bioregion of South West England as a case study. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with three cluster facilitators, a regional workshop involving representatives from nine farm clusters, and a desktop mapping exercise, the research explores how these voluntary, often DEFRA-funded, multi-farm collaborations are reshaping ecological governance, knowledge production, and — in some cases — cultural identity at a landscape scale. The research is framed through four theoretical lenses: agroecology, the knowledge commons, bioregionalism, and post-development theory. Findings indicate that facilitation and trust are the central enabling conditions for cluster success; that clusters increasingly function as decentralised knowledge commons; that agroecological transformation occurs unevenly, concentrated at the lower-to-middle levels of Gliessman’s (2016) transition framework; and that bioregional, catchment-scale collaboration is emerging as an embryonic form of polycentric governance. The report situates these findings within wider debates on commons theory, bioregionalism, and post-development, arguing that farm clusters represent prefigurative — but precarious — institutions for agroecological and bioregional regeneration, whose transformative potential depends on sustained facilitation, secure funding, and a genuine commitment to inclusion.

1. Introduction and Context

Farm clusters — voluntary groupings of neighbouring land managers coordinating action across a landscape rather than within individual farm boundaries — have proliferated rapidly across the UK since 2016, when DEFRA’s Countryside Stewardship Facilitation Fund began financing dedicated facilitators to convene them. There are now estimated to be over 200 such groups nationally, coordinating biodiversity, water quality, soil health, and increasingly social and economic outcomes across millions of hectares (Knight, 2019; Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, 2024).

This research examines nine such clusters operating within or adjacent to the Avon bioregion, a watershed stretching from rural Wiltshire and Gloucestershire through Bath and Bristol to the Severn Estuary. Over 70 per cent of land within the catchment is under agricultural use (DEFRA, 2022), and the region faces interlinked challenges common to much of lowland Britain: soil degradation, diffuse water pollution, biodiversity decline, and increasing climate extremes. Farm clusters have emerged here, as elsewhere, as voluntary, landscape-scale responses to these shared pressures — positioning them not only as environmental delivery mechanisms but as experiments in place-based cooperative governance.

The research is guided by a central question: what is the role of farm cluster groups in the transition towards agroecological futures? This is explored through two sets of sub-questions, addressing (1) the role of farmer-to-farmer horizontal learning and knowledge systems, and (2) the design, approach, and social variables shaping cluster success. The working hypothesis — refined rather than rigidly tested — is that a cluster’s capacity to drive resilience, regeneration and justice depends substantially on its facilitation style, its sense of common identity, and the degree to which its practice (however labelled) aligns with agroecological principles.

2. Theoretical Framework

Four overlapping theoretical lenses inform the analysis. Agroecology, understood as an integrated science, practice and social movement (Wezel et al., 2020), provides the central normative framework, particularly Gliessman’s (2016) five-level model of agroecological transition — moving from input efficiency, through substitution and system redesign, to reconnection with food systems and, ultimately, cultural and institutional transformation. The knowledge commons (Ostrom, 1990; Hess & Ostrom, 2007; Bollier & Helfrich, 2014) reframes governance as a participatory process of collectively producing, sharing and applying knowledge, in contrast to the centralised, expert-led “knowledge–power” model critiqued by Foucault (1980). Bioregionalism (Sale, 1985; Thayer, 2003) argues for organising governance around ecological rather than political or administrative boundaries — watershed, soil type, and landscape character — and for the cultural “reinhabitation” of place that follows. Finally, post-development theory (Sachs, 1993; Escobar, 2005, 2018) critiques the equation of progress with economic growth, positioning agroecology and the commons as prefigurative alternatives rooted in autonomy, pluralism and ecological reciprocity (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020).

3. Methodology

The research adopts a qualitative, interpretivist and explicitly prefigurative methodology, designed to mirror the participatory, horizontal ethos of agroecology itself (Freire, 1970; Pimbert, 2017). Data were generated through three complementary methods: semi-structured interviews (45–50 minutes) with facilitators from three contrasting case-study clusters — Chew, Cam & Wellow (water-quality focus, facilitated by the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust); Mendip Hills (biodiversity and soil health, Somerset Wildlife Trust); and South Cotswold Fosse (a broad, farmer-led soil and habitat initiative); a regional participatory workshop bringing together facilitators and members from all nine identified Avon-bioregion clusters; and a desktop mapping exercise situating clusters spatially within the catchment. Data were analysed thematically following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-stage framework, with triangulation across methods and reflexive journaling used to manage the researcher’s own positionality as an organic farmer and participant within the wider farm cluster and bioregional movement.

4. Findings

4.1 Facilitation and trust as the foundation of collaboration

Across all clusters studied, skilled and consistent facilitation emerged as the single most decisive factor in collaborative success. Facilitators were consistently described as mediators between policy, ecology and practical farming life — a role demanding relational and communicative skill alongside technical competence. Clusters with long-term, well-resourced facilitation demonstrated significantly greater continuity, participation and project delivery than those reliant on short-term or voluntary arrangements. Trust was found to be built rather than assumed: many farmers join clusters initially for the available funding, with deeper commitment and shared identity emerging only after sustained informal contact — shared farm walks, joint projects, and unstructured conversation — over a period of years. This dynamic mirrors Knight’s (2019) characterisation of facilitation as the “social glue” of environmental cooperation, and Freire’s (1970) model of dialogical, relationship-based learning.

4.2 Horizontal knowledge exchange and the knowledge commons

Farmer-to-farmer learning was identified as the central mechanism of change across all nine clusters, consistently described as more persuasive than expert-led advice: practical, peer-witnessed demonstration (“seeing is believing”) was repeatedly cited as more transformative than formal training. Clusters were found to function, in effect, as knowledge commons (Bollier & Helfrich, 2014): co-producing and sharing ecological monitoring data, regenerative techniques, and joint funding bids without proprietary or commercial constraint. This represents a partial inversion of the conventional knowledge–power hierarchy (Foucault, 1980), redistributing epistemic authority from credentialed experts towards practitioners. Digital tools (notably WhatsApp) sustained continuity between in-person events, although several facilitators noted persistent digital exclusion among older farmers, alongside the practical difficulty of engaging a farming community whose working rhythms follow seasonal rather than administrative time.

4.3 Uneven agroecological transformation

Assessed against Gliessman’s (2016) five-level framework, the nine clusters showed substantial variation in agroecological depth. Most clusters operate predominantly at Levels 2–3, characterised by the substitution of more sustainable inputs and techniques and the partial redesign of farming systems — cover cropping, riparian buffers, habitat creation, integrated pest management. A smaller number of clusters, particularly those with an explicit food-systems or bioregional remit, showed emergent characteristics of Levels 4–5: reconnection with local food economies, shared governance structures, and early signs of cultural and systemic transformation. The research suggests this gap reflects a wider conceptual rather than practical limitation: clusters are frequently delivering agroecological outcomes in practice without consciously identifying as agroecological in framing, leaving them vulnerable to absorption into a broader, looser, and potentially shallow “regenerative agriculture” discourse (Hurley, 2024) that risks decoupling ecological technique from agroecology’s deeper commitments to social justice and food sovereignty (Shiva, 2016).

4.4 Emerging bioregional collaboration

A desktop mapping exercise found that cluster boundaries align consistently with watershed catchments, sub-catchments and landscape character areas rather than parish or administrative boundaries — a practical instantiation of bioregionalist principles (Sale, 1985; Thayer, 2003). During the regional workshop, participants began informally referring to the emerging cross-cluster network as the “Avon Supercluster,” reflecting growing dialogue and shared monitoring ambitions between neighbouring groups. This nascent structure resembles Ostrom’s (2010) model of polycentric governance: multiple, self-organising units coordinating voluntarily across scales without centralised authority. Participants were cautious, however, that scaling collaboration risks introducing administrative complexity and a loss of the relational intimacy that underpins cluster-level trust — suggesting that effective bioregional governance must remain explicitly nested, preserving farm- and cluster-level autonomy within wider ecological coordination.

4.5 Cross-cutting constraints: funding and inclusion

Two structural constraints recurred across every cluster studied. First, funding insecurity: short, typically annual, grant cycles were repeatedly described as fundamentally misaligned with the multi-year, relationship-dependent nature of ecological and social change, with the 2024 closure of DEFRA’s Farm Facilitation Fund cited as a direct threat to continuity. Second, inclusion: while cluster facilitation was frequently led by women and a relatively diverse range of individuals, cluster membership remained predominantly older, male, and white, with new entrants, tenant farmers and minority groups significantly under-represented. Participants acknowledged this as a wider failure of the farming sector rather than one specific to clusters, but the research found limited evidence of proactive strategies to address it — representing what is termed a capacity and prioritisation “blind spot” within an otherwise prefigurative movement.

5. Discussion: Relevance to Agroecological Transitions and Bioregional Regeneration

These findings carry significance beyond the Avon catchment, speaking directly to wider debates on how agroecological and bioregional transitions might be enacted, scaled and sustained.

First, farm clusters can usefully be understood as prefigurative institutions (Yates, 2015; Raekstad & Gradin, 2020) — spaces in which the values of an agroecological future (collaboration, ecological reciprocity, distributed knowledge) are enacted in the present, ahead of corresponding shifts in policy or market structure. This reframes clusters as more than delivery mechanisms for agri-environment schemes: they are sites of “re-commoning,” tentatively restoring collective stewardship over land, knowledge and — in a minority of cases — food distribution that earlier waves of enclosure, industrialisation and market consolidation had fragmented (Linebaugh, 2008; Bollier, 2025).

Second, the research speaks to ongoing debates on the politics of scale within agroecological transition. The emergence of the “Avon Supercluster” — and equivalent dynamics likely present in other regions — suggests that Ostrom’s (2010) polycentric governance offers a more accurate descriptive model for landscape-scale environmental cooperation than either pure bottom-up localism or top-down regulatory control. The critical caveat, repeatedly voiced by participants, is that scaling must remain nested: wider coordination should amplify, rather than dilute, the relational trust that makes cluster-level collaboration function. This has direct relevance for policymakers seeking to “scale up” successful local initiatives without inadvertently bureaucratising or hollowing them out.

Third, the bioregional dimension of this research — clusters organising around watershed and landscape character rather than administrative geography — offers grounded, empirical support for bioregionalist theory (Sale, 1985; Thayer, 2003) at a moment when bioregional thinking is gaining renewed traction in UK environmental governance, for example through Local Nature Recovery Strategies and catchment partnerships. It also responds, in part, to long-standing critiques of bioregionalism as parochial or disconnected from wider political economy (Pepper, 1996; Proctor, 1998): the clusters studied were not isolationist, but increasingly outward-looking, coordinating across catchment boundaries and engaging with regional and national funding and policy structures.

Fourth, and most urgently, the research underscores a live tension within the wider “regenerative agriculture” movement, of which farm clusters are now a significant part. Because regenerative framing is conceptually broad and only loosely accountable to ecological or social outcomes, it is vulnerable to co-option — delivering soil-health gains while leaving structural questions of land access, farmer power, and food-system justice untouched (Shiva, 2016; Hurley, 2024). The clusters showing the deepest agroecological characteristics in this research were precisely those willing to engage with these harder questions: food sovereignty, shared economics, and active inclusion work. This suggests that the long-term trajectory of the wider farm cluster movement — whether it deepens into genuine agroecological and bioregional transformation, or settles into a shallower, technocratic version of “nature-friendly farming” — will depend less on ecological technique than on governance, funding structure, and political will.

Finally, these findings carry direct policy relevance. They support continued and expanded investment in long-term, flexible facilitation funding, rather than short-cycle, output-driven grants; formal recognition of farmer-generated knowledge within research and Environmental Land Management policy design; and active support for connecting cluster-level ecological work to shorter, more equitable food supply chains — food hubs, Community Supported Agriculture, and producer cooperatives — as a route towards the deeper, Level 4–5 transformation that most clusters have not yet reached.

6. Conclusion

This research set out to examine the role of farm cluster groups in transitions towards agroecological food and farming systems, using the Avon bioregion as an empirical case. It finds that farm clusters are not merely administrative delivery vehicles for agri-environment policy, but are becoming — unevenly, and not without risk — prefigurative institutions in which ecological, social and epistemological regeneration intersect. Facilitation and trust are the foundational, non-negotiable conditions for this work; horizontal knowledge exchange is reshaping who holds authority over what counts as good farming; and bioregional, catchment-scale thinking is emerging as a credible, grounded alternative to administrative geography. Yet the depth of this transformation remains highly uneven, and is genuinely at risk of being absorbed into a shallower, depoliticised “regenerative” narrative unless matched by long-term funding, deliberate inclusion, and a willingness to engage with the harder questions of power, land and food-system justice that agroecology has always asked. Realised fully, farm clusters offer a credible, place-rooted pathway towards bioregional regeneration; realised partially, they risk becoming a well-intentioned footnote to business-as-usual agriculture.

Selected References

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Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S. (2014). The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State. Levellers Press.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.

DEFRA (2022). Agricultural Statistics and Land Use Report 2022. UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press.

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon Books.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.

Gliessman, S. R. (2016). Transforming food systems with agroecology. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 40(3), 187–189.

Hurley, P. D. (2024). Barriers and enablers to uptake of agroecological and regenerative practices. Natural Environment Research Council.

Knight, M. (2019). Farm-cluster case study. South Downs National Park Authority.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond markets and states: Polycentric governance of complex economic systems. American Economic Review, 100(3), 641–672.

Raekstad, P., & Gradin, S. S. (2020). Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today. Polity Press.

Sale, K. (1985). Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. Sierra Club Books.

Shiva, V. (2016). Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. North Atlantic Books.

Thayer, R. L. (2003). LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice. University of California Press.

Wezel, A., Herren, B. G., Kerr, R. B., Barrios, E., Gonçalves, A. L. R., & Sinclair, F. (2020). Agroecological principles and elements and their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 40, 1–13.

Yates, L. (2015). Rethinking prefiguration: Alternatives, micropolitics and goals in social movements. Social Movement Studies, 14(1), 1–21.

Full citation: Evans, H. (2025). Bioregional Regeneration: The Role of Farm Cluster Groups in Transitions Towards Agroecology [Dissertation]. Centre for Agroecology, Water & Resilience, Coventry University.