ffinlo Costain (8point9.com) and Martin Lines (Nature Friendly Farming Network) discuss what's happening on Papley Grove farm in the coming month of April. They also turn their attention to English farm policy - and then to the Welsh and Scottish Government elections, coming this May.

ffinlo and Martin are joined by Rhys Evans (NFFN Cymru) and Nim Kibbler (NFFN Scotland).

New pests and diseases are threatening UK livestock, crops and forests. They're coming to the UK in the wind, with birds, on people and in imported soils.

Why are these pests and diseases migrating? Can we prevent them from coming? And what do we need to do to mitigate the risks?

ffinlo Costain is joined by Catherine Harries, Senior Crop Protection Scientist at AHDB - by Kate Palmer, the Technical and Industry Support Manager at Confor - and by Yoav Alony-Gilboa, livestock vet and director of Friars Moor Livestock Health.

Cattle in regenerative farm systems deliver remarkable ecological value at the same time as producing food and fibre.

In this programme, we focus on methane and hydroxyl radicals - the highly reactive molecules that wash methane out of the sky, dismantling it back into its constituent parts of carbon and hydrogen.

We talk about where hydroxyl radicals come from, and why, in well-hydrated regenerative pastures there are more of them - meaning that they can work more rapidly to break down the methane produced by the grazing cattle present in those managed ecosystems.

To take us through the science, I'm joined by the blogger known on X as @Regenetarianism. Stephen shuns the spotlight and speaks publicly only extremely rarely. He isn't an academic, but he is someone that high level academics turn to for insight on these subjects, because his knowledge is so deep and broad following a great many years of research, synthesising knowledge from hundreds of peer-reviewed papers that address methane's physical and chemical processes, and working to understand them in the context of ruminant agriculture.

Stephen has kindly written a referenced blog to accompany this podcast. It's called - On hydroxyl radicals and increasing the atmospheric oxidation capacity: key points and an outline. The blog can be found at lachefs.net.

Direct link: https://lachefnet.wordpress.com/2026/02/15/on-hydroxyl-radicals-increasing-the-atmospheric-oxidation-capacity-key-points-an-outline/