South of England Farming Technical Forums
Our Farming Technical Forums address a variety of subjects in land-based industries with leading experts in their field and those with hands-on experience.
Forums are generally held online, two times a year, are free to attend and are available to book online.
29th April 2026: "Fine Margins, Big Impact: Driving Efficiency on Farm"
We discussed the likes of:
In today’s challenging agricultural landscape, success isn’t about working harder—it’s about working smarter. This South of England Agricultural Society Technical Forum brings together leading voices and real farm experience to explore how marginal gains can drive meaningful profitability.
From input use and labour efficiency to benchmarking, technology, and smarter system changes, this livestreamed session will focus on practical, actionable ways to build leaner, more resilient farm businesses.
Chaired by Mark Campbell and Co-hosted by Max MacGillivray of Beanstalk GlobalÂ
A huge thank you to Savills for sponsoring.
Our Speakers
Keith Gue
Keith is a Director at Huddlestone Farmers Ltd, having begun his career outside of agriculture and at Genus ABS before moving home. He is currently responsible for 700 milking cows across two robotic herds in West Sussex within the mixed farming family business.
Neil Fedden
Neil has over 30 years’ experience working within best-practice organisations across the FMCG, electronics, and automotive sectors. He specialises in Lean methodologies, manufacturing cell implementation, and supply chain optimisation.With a degree in Electronics and an MBA, he has driven sales growth using advanced project and customer relationship management. His work includes establishing manufacturing facilities in Mexico for US markets and in Hungary for European operations, followed by a move into consultancy as Head of Operations for EEF South.
Neil now runs Fedden USP Ltd, helping organisations implement Lean and continuous improvement strategies, with clients including major global manufacturers and public sector organisations. Over the past 17 years, he has worked with more than 200 agriculture and horticulture businesses. More recently, he has supported over 30 dairy farms to achieve average savings of £100,000 while reducing carbon emissions by 8–10%, leading to the co-founding of Cowzen
Ben WilliamsÂ
Ben has specialised in education and change management for almost 2 decades and has delivered a wide range of programs across a number of agricultural sectors. Past project work has looked at behavioural science, farm efficiency, digital twins and AI, sustainable fuels from farm wastes, the use of microbials in soil health and a broad range of sustainability mitigations at farm level. In his current role at Leprino, Ben has delivered a 14.5% fall in carbon footprint at a product level for mozzarella in less than 4 years. At farm level alone the average fall in carbon footprint is 11.8%. At the same time these programs have delivered £3.7 million of annual savings for farmer suppliers. This rapid shift in a diverse and complex supply base is linked directly to the use of behavioural science and campaign strategy to drive adoption at a rate not typical in the agricultural sector.
Peter Appleton - Dairy Farmer
More information coming soon.
Andrew Flake - Sheep & Arable Farmer
Andrew Flake is a 5th generation farmer running 900 ewes, 70 pedigree Sussex cattle and 500 acres of arable over his 1000 acre family farm on the South Downs.
“Every year we open our gates to 20,000 people who visit our working farm during the lambing season with the hope of educating the public in all aspects of our farming enterprise.”
The farm also boasts multiple diversifications for which they deal with the public on a daily basis.
Previous Farming Technical Forums
Harvesting Opportunity: The Modern Farming Mindset
Watch previous recordings by clicking the button below: