Giant worm unearths challenges at Cereals 2025 and Groundswell 2025

Henny Lowth explains how a giant earthworm at key summer events during 2025 unearthed some big farming challenges.

We need to prioritise our limited resources on the things that matter most to levy payers, which is why we opened our ‘letterbox’ last year.

The letterbox gathers knowledge gaps, practical challenges and long-term concerns that AHDB can potentially help address.

When levy payers contact us, whether it be via chatting with staff at events or sending in ideas online, it helps us keep our boots on the ground.

But we need to dig deeper and unearth as many views as possible. In an increasingly frenetic world, doing something unorthodox helps attract attention.

At Cereals 2025 (11 to 12 June, Lincolnshire), we unveiled the newest member of the AHDB team – Long John Slither (LJS).

Social media (via a poll) helped name our soil-dwelling friend with a serious mission: to gather views on what work AHDB could help deliver.

Farming is diverse and continually evolving, which provides a mixed bag of challenges. LJS is helping to steer our ship through the muddy waters.

By the end of the event, almost 100 views were written on the worm, which will be added to more than 1,500 views already recorded in the letterbox.

1. Biostimulants (9)
2. Grass weed management (7)
3. Crop varieties (4)

The response numbers (in brackets) hint at the variation in responses. About 80% of views were outside the top three!

This is why it is important to gather as many views as possible to cut through the noise and keep us on the right track.

In the whole letterbox, ‘nutrition’ is currently the most cited topic (346), followed by crop protection and IPM (190), the environment (180) and soil health (173) – LJS was particularly pleased to see the latter topic!

Long John Slither reappeared at Groundswell on 2 to 3 July in Hertfordshire (pictured).

The questions and ideas gathered guide what we do next, with input from our farmer-led Research and Knowledge Exchange (R&KE) committee and the sector council.

To discover how we are already putting your ideas to work or to send in views, visit our letterbox.