The pandemic has brought a reckoning for how we feed ourselves and where we get our food. The Estate could support connections to local food through food partnerships, community groups taking on council leasehold sites, and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes that link food producers to consumers. Farming within the Estate should work with nature with restorative principles to increase biodiversity, soil health and food quality so food production and environmental protection can go hand in hand. 

Sussex Wildlife Trust 'Regenerative agriculture and landscape innovation'
Tablehurst and Plaw Hatch Community Farm Cooperative
Articles on the ways farming is changing in Sussex from CPRE, the Countryside Charilty
BBC Radio Four series English Pastoral by farmer James Redbanks
National Farmers Union 'South Downs farms help soil and water'
A Farmer talks about the value of permanent grazed pasture for Carbon Sequestration  
Pasture Promise: An introduction to the qualities of grass
An organic mixed farm on the boundaries between Wiltshire and Hampshire, with relevance to farming on chalk
Farming with Nature the Cholderton Way

British Ecological Society's 2021 report on on nature-based solutions for climate change in the UK
“Restoring permanent grassland via reversion from improved grassland or arable land, including the restoration of wet or chalk grasslands as part of a varied mosaic style landscape, can positively impact biodiversity and reduce GHG emissions. For example, figures from the UK Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) GHG inventory indicate that conversion of arable land to grassland has the potential for removing 8.72 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) per hectare per year (t.CO2 /ha/yr) across the UK.1  In contrast, conversion of grassland to arable land can result in net emissions of 14.29 megatons (Mt.CO2 e/ha/yr)1”