A group of oat growers supplying grain trader Robin Appel Ltd will have their farms measured across six environmental areas and receive tailored, independent advice, under a new partnership with Soil Association Exchange aimed at building resilience and developing best practice.

Each of the 15 farms will create baselines across carbon, soil, water, biodiversity, animal welfare and social responsibility — a whole-farm picture rather than a carbon-only figure. Every grower then gets dedicated one-to-one time with an independent farm adviser to act on their own results, plus a hands-on workshop to share practical learning across the group.

The programme funds collection and lab costs for farmers to assess their soils, as well as Exchange technicians to collect data on metrics such as plant species diversity, hedgerow quality and bird surveys.  The Exchange software then pulls in complementary data from other third-party sources to complete the picture, making up a total of 40 metrics for farmers to interrogate. 

The partnership lands after several brutal seasons for arable growers. The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit found that three poor UK harvests this decade resulted in a cumulative weather-related loss of £2.3bn across cereals, driven by extreme rainfall in 2020 and 2024 and extreme heat and drought in 2025. 

Tom Frampton is Operations Manager at J M Stratton & Co, a large, diversified arable farming business based at Codford in Wiltshire. He said: "We're seeing the effects of climate change first-hand, with increasingly wet winters and dry summers. It's becoming more important to understand how resilient our farm is, and that starts with our soils. For me, the value of this programme is having the data to show us how our soils are performing now, where improvements can be made, and how we can make them more resilient for whatever weather conditions we may face in the years to come."

Oats are especially exposed to extreme weather. With the crop preforming best in wetter and cooler growing environments, grain traders like Robin Appel Ltd are predicting that oat production will be required to move further west if climate trends continue. Ensuring growers are equipped to produce top quality oats while coping with climate extremes is therefore a key aim of the partnership with Soil Association Exchange. 

The processors and oat drink brands Robin Appel Ltd supplies increasingly want robust data on how oats are grown — to secure a more resilient British supply and to back their own sustainability claims. Robin Appel Ltd supplies oat groats to Somerset based processor Framptons Ltd who specialise in produce bases for the UK oat drinks market. Crucially for growers, the farm advice under the partnership is independent.

Tom Wood, Trading Director at Robin Appel Ltd, said: "Our growers are some of the best in the country, and this gives them the tools to prove it. There's a lot of loose talk about sustainability in our industry, and I wasn't interested in green window-dressing or a box-ticking exercise. We backed this because it's genuinely rigorous: whole-farm measurement across six areas, plus advice that's independent, so growers can actually trust it because no one's trying to sell them something off the back of it. That's good for the farmer first and foremost, and it's what our customers are asking for too."

Soil Association Exchange Sales Manager Mike Bond said: "This is exactly the kind of supply chain leadership we want to see. Robin Appel Ltd has recognised the need to measure and provide farm level data, and how this will add value to the whole supply chain. With a key processor and brands in support, this is a great initiative supporting their supplying farmers. The Exchange metrics provide scientifically rigorous data, and by pairing this insight with independent expert advice for each farm, we can turn that measurement into change on the ground. The challenges for arable farmers are very real, and Robin Appel Ltd are rising to that challenge, supporting their farmers, building resilience, these 15 farms are just the start."

The programme is up and running already, with results feeding both farm-level action plans and supply chain reporting.