The work of bringing a soil-biological treatment to a farm has proved rather more difficult than putting a product list on a slide. A farm is not a market segment. It is a living system, a business exposed to weather and prices, and a place where a failed promise can cost someone a season. That is why this is not a launch announcement. It is an honest account of the routes Green Campus Ltd has explored in the United Kingdom and Italy while seeking responsible, independently observed field comparisons for Rootella and complementary soil-biological treatments.
Our starting point is simple. Mycorrhizae are fungi that can form a mutually beneficial association with plant roots. In the relevant agricultural literature they are often called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). The proposition is not that a packet makes every crop thrive; it is that, under suitable conditions, root colonisation may help a crop explore soil and use nutrients and water more effectively. That proposition has to be tested locally, against untreated comparisons and with the grower in control of the risk.
The published Benevento interim report is one such small, farmer-led comparison. It is an interim observation, not a universal verdict. The longer story is what came before it and what has not yet happened: many conversations, target maps and proposals, but no finished national route to market.
Two planning presentations, one for the United Kingdom and one for Italy, were made to clarify the kind of ecosystem a serious programme would need. They mapped potential relationships rather than established ones: growers, farmer-owned businesses, merchants, processors, researchers, educators and people able to tell a careful story about soil. The maps were deliberately broad because a credible programme should not depend on one person or one farm.
The United Kingdom presentation placed four roles alongside one another: potential product partners, customer or dealer farms, research collaborators, and public education. It included estates, farming families, food companies, conservation-minded projects, conferences and charities as possible routes for conversation. The Italy presentation sketched comparable routes through grain and pasta supply chains, input dealers, seed partners, vegetable and tomato organisations, cooperatives, organic and biodynamic associations, and university-linked research. Neither presentation was a list of signed partners, an endorsement, or a distribution agreement.
That distinction matters. A contact written on a planning map is an invitation to learn, not permission to use a name in public. The practical question has remained: who is willing and able to set aside a properly documented strip or field, agree the treatment and comparison in advance, and share the outcome whether it is positive, neutral or disappointing?
The Italian work began with a relationship around wheat and pasta in Benevento, and with interest in connecting farm practice to an evidence-led conversation. That route was attractive because it joined a crop, a grower, a processor-facing context and a nearby research community. The interim report records the 2025 field work and the limitations of that work: it was a limited comparison in one setting, without the replication and independent protocol required to make broad performance claims.
The Italian launch map therefore did not treat the Benevento result as a licence to announce a national rollout. It identified the kinds of people with whom a next phase might be designed: grain and pasta businesses that care about raw-material quality; agricultural merchants who understand application and storage; seed and crop advisers; grower associations; and university researchers who can help turn a promising observation into a transparent protocol. This is a route map for patient verification, not a declaration that any named Italian company, cooperative or university has agreed to trial, distribute or recommend a product.
Green Campus Ltd’s role is equally specific. We are independently reviewing existing industry reports and academic publications, then asking whether their questions can be tested honestly in a particular field. An independent review of evidence is not a replication, an audit or a certification of the original work. A new trial must earn its own conclusion, and a negative or inconclusive result is useful knowledge if it prevents a grower spending time and money on the wrong intervention.
The United Kingdom search has been slower. In a letter sent to Sir Patrick Holden in August 2026, Green Campus set out the routes already tried and asked for help identifying an appropriate farm partner. The letter was a request for introductions and discussion. It should not be read as an endorsement by Sir Patrick, the Sustainable Food Trust, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, River Cottage, Câr-y-Môr, or anyone else copied into the correspondence.
The hoped-for trial was deliberately practical: a commercial-scale comparison on a grower’s land, preferably with enough area to be meaningful, alongside the grower’s normal practice. The working idea was to use Rootella and, where appropriate, a seaweed-based companion treatment while testing a lower-starter-phosphate or no-starter-phosphate comparison only where the farmer and agronomist considered it safe. That is not a prescription for every farm. It is a testable question based on soil analysis, crop need and good husbandry.
The letter named a recurring obstacle. In heavily fertilised systems, readily available phosphorus can reduce the plant’s incentive to form a strong mycorrhizal association. That is a working hypothesis worth testing, not an excuse to tell growers that their soils are wrong or to withhold a nutrient a crop needs. Field-specific soil tests, a sensible control, and the grower’s agronomic judgement must come first.
An early route was through the Arundel world in which Green Campus first developed its forest-garden work. In the account set out in the August letter, an approach to the Duke of Norfolk and his son Henry did not become a Rootella field trial. We found no later correspondence evidencing a trial agreement. That is not a criticism of either person or estate; it is simply a reminder that landowners have their own priorities, responsibilities and existing programmes.
Another route was through a family connection involved in television and farming media. The hope was that a working farm with a visible public story might be interested in a measured comparison. As described in the letter, that route was already committed elsewhere and did not become available for a trial. Visibility is not the same thing as capacity, and it would be wrong to treat a public farming programme as an open invitation to test every new input.
Local agricultural merchants were approached because they are often the people who understand whether a treatment can actually be stored, applied and supported. After an initial conversation with Goodrowes of Chichester, Green Campus prepared a detailed proposal for a localised trial and possible dealer pathway. The proposal was a genuine attempt to describe responsibilities, suitable farm types and a staged route to evidence. Our email record does not show it becoming an executed dealership or a confirmed field trial. A proposal is useful work, but it is not an agreement.
The UK planning work also looked towards experienced wheat growers, including contacts linked to award-winning production and the bakery supply chain. In the Sir Patrick letter, the writer recorded that those particular approaches did not receive a response and did not produce a field partner. We have not found later correspondence that changes that conclusion. Silence does not tell us why: people are busy, cautious, content with existing programmes, or simply not interested. It should never be turned into a public judgement about their farming.
Farming conferences and food-system gatherings created conversations, not yet a trial. The August letter asked Sir Patrick Holden and the Sustainable Food Trust for help finding farms that might consider a carefully designed comparison. It also referred to a previous attempted introduction to Câr-y-Môr after a conference. According to the correspondence, that connection did not reach the intended person. The letter copied Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and River Cottage because their work has helped bring questions of food, landscape and farming into public view; it did not record their agreement to participate.
This is one of the subtler lessons of the work. A good conversation can be valuable even when it does not become a commercial relationship. But an email copy list is not a coalition, and an admired name is not a farm trial. We have tried to write this entry accordingly.
A further route was through the European agroecology research community. The correspondence shows a possible consortium opportunity that did not proceed after its timing and requirements had passed. That loss was disappointing, because structured research collaboration can add independent measurement and shared learning. It does not, however, make the work impossible. It clarifies the next need: a small, well-specified pilot with a willing grower, baseline soil data, clear comparison plots and an agreed method for recording results.
There is a temptation, once a product has promise and a deck has been made, to turn every contact into a success story. We have chosen not to do that. A trial carried out only to create a testimonial is not a trial. A dealer appointed without training, evidence and a clear support route is not a durable relationship. And a national claim built from one photograph, one season or one supplier brochure does not serve the farmer who has to make the decision.
The extensive body of existing commercial trials and academic publication provides reasons to investigate mycorrhizal inoculation seriously. It does not remove the need for local verification. Outcomes can depend on the crop, soil biology, phosphorus status, cultivation history, weather, product quality and application method. Green Campus Ltd is therefore not presenting the existing literature as a guarantee. We are using it to frame questions that a transparent farm comparison can answer.
The next useful step is modest and clear: find one or more grower partners in the United Kingdom or Italy who want to investigate the question on their own terms. Before application, agree the crops, treatment, untreated comparison, soil sampling, nutrient plan, observations, harvest measures and who may communicate the results. Ensure the trial does not compromise the crop’s essential nutrition. Publish the method as well as the outcome. If the result is neutral, say so. If it is positive, invite scrutiny before making it a promise.
In Italy, the Benevento work gives us a starting place from which to ask better questions. In the United Kingdom, the process of not yet finding the right farm has taught us to value consent, protocol and practical fit over attention. The desired field network is still a work in progress. That is not a polished ending, but it is the truthful one.
This entry draws on the Green Campus United Kingdom and Italy launch-planning presentations and on Green Campus correspondence reviewed in August 2026, including the letter to Sir Patrick Holden. It distinguishes planning targets, outreach and confirmed activity. No person or organisation named here should be understood to endorse, sell, distribute or trial Rootella unless a separate, confirmed agreement explicitly says so. Green Campus Ltd does not assert a current distribution right through this article.
The Green Campus Journal chronicles the latest entries from all green teams.
For the full list of entries see: create.green/journal
Here I tell the story of the people and processes that won the final debate of the 200th aniversary of The Oxford Union on the motion: This House Would Go Vegan. The effort was intended to shine a light on the arguments of Dr. Sailesh Rao and Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop that insist we must include the Carbon opportunity Cost of deforestation, the carbon that can not be sequestered by forests that are cut down, in the IPCC and therefore national carbon accounting conventions. Including COC in Carbon accounting conventions shows that livestock is responsible for 87% of Global Temperature Change Potential and focusing on fossil fuels is actually speeding up climate change. The event allowed us to meet researchers at Oxford who argue for and against the position and yet we continue our work to find written arguments against the position which was won on the day. We are very Grateful to The Oxford Union for supporting this event and allowing us to use it to shine a light into this all important place. The story follows:
"There is no reason for Beavers to Exist!" - Charlie Baker, Chair of The Arun and Rother Rivers Trust
Reforest Party (aka Restoration Weekends - NB the big ones are timed on the celestial dates not weekends) tickets are on sale at create.green/party
For more articles see the full journal page