I Question What I Eat: A Farmer's Personal Journey to Regenerative Farming

Why I began questioning our food — and how family, loss and tired soil led to a different way of farming.

It Began in a Granny Annex

I am often asked why I have gone so deeply down the rabbit hole of food, health and regenerative farming here in Portugal. The answer is not found in a book or a documentary. It began much closer to home.

Many years ago, Kate and I built a granny annex onto the side of our home in Shipham, Somerset, so that my mother and father could move in with us. We lived together for several years, and during that time I had a front-row seat to something that troubled me deeply. I watched my mother's health slowly decline.

She had been prescribed statins for many years. She frequently complained of aching muscles and joints, her energy seemed to diminish, and, most concerning of all, her memory gradually deteriorated. As time passed, her forgetfulness became increasingly obvious. She developed tremors and involuntary tics, and everyday life became progressively more difficult.

The Gift of Time

At the same time, Kate and I were preparing to leave our working lives behind to go sailing. For the first time in many years I suddenly had something I had been short of for a long time: time. Time to think, to question, and to research.

Initially, my focus was simply trying to understand what was happening to my mother. Again and again I found myself drawn back to statins — how they work, their intended benefits, and the growing number of people sharing experiences of side effects. Whether every account was accurate or not almost became secondary. What mattered was that it opened a door I had never previously walked through.

Widening Questions

From there, my curiosity widened. I began to ask more fundamental questions. What was actually in the food we were eating? Had the nutritional quality of food changed over time? Why were ultra-processed foods, refined carbohydrates and sugar becoming such a dominant part of the modern diet?

My parents, like so many of their generation, had developed a real fondness for convenience foods and sweet treats. I could not help but wonder whether this shift in diet was playing a far greater role in declining health than we had ever been led to believe.

Although Mum and Dad were fortunate to reach a good age, I would not say they were ageing well. My father suffered from significant joint problems, eventually requiring both a hip and a knee replacement. At the same time, he carried the increasing responsibility of caring for my mother as her memory deteriorated. Watching one parent slowly fade while the other becomes their full-time carer is something that leaves a deep and lasting imprint.

YouTube, and a Personal Loss

Around this time, I also began using YouTube as a learning tool. It became an unexpected but powerful source of information. I came across countless videos discussing the impact of sugar, refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods on human health, and the potential consequences of long-term overconsumption.

This resonated with me on a very personal level. My older brother Andrew had passed away some years earlier from a brain tumour. He had always had a very sweet tooth and drank large amounts of Coca-Cola, something I had often questioned even at the time, without fully understanding why. Looking back, I began to wonder whether there were deeper connections between diet, inflammation and long-term health outcomes than I had ever appreciated.

A New Framework

As my understanding grew, I started to piece things together in my own mind — the nutritional value of food, the way it is produced, the way it is marketed, and the highly addictive nature of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Slowly, this formed a new framework through which I began to view not just food, but health itself.

All of these experiences — watching my parents decline, losing my brother, and beginning to understand the impact of diet — came together to fundamentally shift my perspective.

The Soil We Inherited

When Kate and I eventually purchased what was then our new farm, I approached it with a very different mindset. We wanted to create a self-sustaining, regenerative, chemical-free food system. But very quickly I realised the soil we had inherited was exhausted — depleted, lifeless in many areas, and entirely dependent on chemical inputs.

That realisation was a turning point.

Why I Farm This Way

My personal experiences, combined with what I was learning from people such as Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin, Dr Christine Jones, and many others, led me to a very simple but unavoidable conclusion: our food system is broken. The way food is grown, processed, marketed and sold to the public is fundamentally disconnected from health, soil and long-term sustainability.

It is for that reason that I embarked on the journey I am on today, and why I have developed my own approach to stewardship of the land. Not as a theory, but as a response to everything I have seen, lived, and come to understand.