Calixta Killander
After six years in the United States completing a degree in Sustainable Agriculture and time spent working on a variety of fruit and vegetable farms, I returned home to Cambridgeshire and founded Flourish Produce.
What began as a small market garden has evolved into an 80-acre organic farm, producing over 750 varieties of vegetables, salads, herbs, fruit, flowers, and heritage grains.
Agroecological principles are at the heart of our business and our growth a testament that farming can be ecologically regenerative and economically sustainable. However, the evolution and expansion of the farm has revealed a lack of industry wide adoption of many of these practises.
Through my Nuffield Farming Scholarship and the generous support from the Elizabeth Creak Charitable Trust, I hope to explore the relationship between agroecological practices, technology and innovation and how they can be scaled to enable larger producers to thrive while protecting the precious ecosystems on which British agriculture depends.
How can Agroecology be Scaled to Provide Resilient Solutions for the UK’s Fruit and Veg Farmers?
Elizabeth Creak Charitable Trust
Study Overview
UK fruit and vegetable farmers are facing an array of structural, ecological, and economic challenges, compounded by increasing weather volatility and growing pressures on water resources. Agroecology offers a promising pathway forward. Grounded in diverse ecological practices that strengthen soil health and enhance ecosystem resilience, one of its greatest strengths lies in its systems-thinking approach—one that balances social responsibility and long-term financial stability alongside practical environmental principles.
While agroecology has demonstrated profitability and resilience at smaller scales, its broader adoption will depend on understanding how these principles can be effectively scaled to meet the demands of modern production. Through the invaluable opportunity provided by the Nuffield Scholarship and the Elizabeth Creak Charitable Trust, I aim to learn from farmers, and researchers around the world who are operating at the intersection of ecological farming, innovation and technology.
This experience will deepen my understanding of how agroecological approaches can be adapted and scaled across diverse fruit and vegetable production systems, and will help identify tangible pathways to embed resilience, efficiency, social responsibility and financial sustainability at the heart of the UK’s horticultural future.