In 2025, a great deal of it failed.
Drought took thirty per cent of the wheat and forty per cent of the barley. Durum came in under two tonnes a hectare against an expected six. That is the ordinary risk of arable farming, and if you take a patch you are sharing it.
The policy, in plain English.
Both the farm and you share the risk of crop failure due to weather, pests and acts of God. That sentence is not decorative — it is the operative term, and you agree to it before you pay rather than discovering it afterwards.
If your crop fails or comes in materially short, one of two things happens, and you choose which at the point of purchase: substitute produce of equivalent value from the wider farm and estate, or a partial refund calculated against what was actually harvested.
What does not happen is nothing. A "no refund if the crop fails" term with no substitution and no shared-risk framing would be a grey-list unfair term under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and it would also be a rotten way to behave.
What happens, by outcome.
| Outcome | What you receive |
|---|---|
| A normal harvest | The produce, in kind, as described |
| A short harvest | A proportionate quantity, plus your choice of substitution or partial refund for the shortfall |
| Total crop failure | Substitute produce of equivalent value, or a partial refund — your choice, made at purchase |
| We fail to plant it at all | A full refund. That one is on us, not on the weather. |
| You change your mind before drilling | A full refund |
| You change your mind after drilling | Nothing, because the cost has been incurred. Stated plainly here. |
Your money is ring-fenced
Prepayments are held in a ring-fenced account until the produce is delivered. Paying by card also gives you Section 75 protection under the Consumer Credit Act for purchases between £100 and £30,000, plus chargeback rights. We would rather you knew about both.
Why we are so specific about this.
Community-supported agriculture has been doing shared-risk agreements for decades, and the ones that work all share one feature: the risk is stated explicitly, up front, in the member agreement.
The ones that fail are the ones where somebody paid two hundred pounds in March and received an apologetic email in September. We would rather be tediously clear in March.
Failure, questioned.
Four questions from the year it actually happened.
The weighbridge does. A harvest is a weighed tonnage over a measured area, and the shortfall against the plan is arithmetic rather than judgement.
No. You choose at purchase, in March, so that nobody is negotiating in August with a bad harvest in front of them. It can be changed at any point before harvest.
Something from the wider farm and estate at the price you paid — flour for failed durum, oats for failed barley, or estate credit against anything on this site.
In 2025, on the durum and on most of the barley. Everybody holding one took the substitution and nobody took the partial refund, which surprised us.
The legal position.
Why this is structured as a forward sale rather than anything else.
