Farm491 Challenge – supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

In autumn 2025, we were delighted to launch our second Farm491 Challenge – part of our competition series aimed to encourage and support companies fostering innovation in our natural world.

Generously supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, this three-year series enables companies, which are developing innovative ways to solve challenges in the natural world, to invest in their business and develop their product.

Farm491 Challenge Prize Logo

The Challenge

For the second year of the Farm491 Challenge Prize series, the challenge was ‘Mixed Land Use’.

Land is under unprecedented pressure in the UK and globally, to make space for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, food and energy production, and housing. One of the solutions to these issues is to stack land uses by finding synergies that mitigate this resource competition. We looked for companies developing innovative products and services that support nature friendly, multifunctional land use. 

These included (but were not limited to) products and services that enable:

  • Agroforestry
  • Regenerative and productive housing development
  • Intercropping food and non-food crops
  • Co-producing food and renewables

The Result

The Farm491 Challenge Prize 2025 has now concluded.

After consideration by a preliminary judging panel, a shortlist of six companies was chosen in October 2025. On 12 December 2025 finalists pitched their company or idea to a panel of judges at the Alliston Centre on the Royal Agricultural University campus. Read more about the 2025 shortlist here.

An overall winner, Lochhill Agroecological Farm, was selected and awarded a £40,000 cash prize, plus 12 months mentoring and business support from Farm491. Lochhill impressed the judges with its enterprise-stacking approach and aims to boost biodiversity, to improve ecological health, to create resilient and sustainable livelihoods and to have a programme of education, training and learning.

The runner-up, Wild Woodland Celebrations, received £20,000, plus 12 months mentoring and support from Farm491. It inspired the judges with its mission to transform their woodland into a multifunctional landscape that delivers biodiversity gains, carbon sequestration, and sustainable income.

Check back soon for our official press release here.

Farm491 Challenge Prize 2026

The Farm491 Challenge Prize will return in 2026 for its final year. Please check back for details in summer 2026.