Landscape context and pressures

The Avon Bioregion in the West of England sits in a bowl-shaped valley with higher ground around the edges, strongly influenced by tidal and sea-level dynamics. Home to around 1.5 million people, its economy spans agriculture (arable, dairy, livestock), tourism, heritage, aerospace engineering, and a growing knowledge economy.

Water quality is degraded by nutrient runoff, sewage, soil erosion, and urban discharge. Rivers have been modified and fragmented, sea-level rise and flooding are placing estuarine habitats under stress, urbanisation is fragmenting habitats, and farmers face fragmented, inefficient routes to market — long supply chains with low local value capture — alongside infrastructure gaps in rural areas.

Yet across this landscape, ten active farmer clusters comprising 600 farmers and covering 65,100 hectares are already working with three backbone organisations – We Are Avon, BART, and FWAG-SW – to build something remarkable: what may become the UK’s first landscape-scale regenerative farm supercluster.

What are we doing there?

Commonland entered a needs assessment with We Are Avon in late 2025 to understand how best to support this emerging supercluster structure. The opportunity is significant: by helping farmer clusters coordinate at catchment scale, the partnership can demonstrate how aggregating existing landscape initiatives into broader approaches unlocks systemic impact.

Building the Farm Supercluster: Supporting the alignment and coordination of ten farmer clusters through needs and opportunities assessment, impact review, fundraising and finance mapping, communications strategy (including GIS mapping), and governance structure development.

Co-production and learning: Offline co-production workshops and online meetings bringing together backbone organisations and cluster leads to co-design the supercluster approach.

Exchange and learning infrastructure: Developing pathways for farm cluster-to-cluster learning exchange, with ambitions for a shared learning portal connecting to other landscape-scale initiatives across the Atlantic Isles.

Key challenges & opportunities

Challenges

• Water quality degradation from multiple sources
• River modification and habitat fragmentation
• Sea-level rise, flooding, and estuarine stress
• Fragmented and inefficient routes to market
• Infrastructure gaps in rural areas
• Governance complexity across multiple farmer clusters

Opportunities

• 10 farmer clusters and 600 farmers already organised and ready to unite
• Three strong backbone organisations providing institutional foundation
• Potential to become a replicable model for farmer cluster aggregation across the UK
• Learning exchange with other Atlantic Isles landscapes
• Strong policy alignment with England’s ELM scheme and Landscape Recovery programme

Vision for the landscape

A West of England where farmer clusters work together at catchment scale, sharing knowledge, coordinating action, and demonstrating that regenerative agriculture can thrive as a collective endeavour, delivering for nature, communities, and farm livelihoods.