In today’s episode I speak to farmer, educator and my own business partner, Jonty Brunyee. As I was preparing to change careers 7 years ago, I approached Jonty and his wife, Mel, to see if there was scope for setting up a market garden here at Conygree Farm. To cut a long story short, we went into partnership and the rest is history! Inspired by Jonty and Mel, I have become evangelical about partnerships and I have been keen for a while to sit down with Jonty and get him talking. Anyway, we sat down last week, in between lambing, calving, harvesting, blow-drying the water pump and setting up for our big spring plant sale weekend. We talked about being enterprising, enterprise stacking and synergy, the ins and outs of joint ventures, partnerships and the importance of business planning. Jonty, as he says himself, is a big picture person and a people person. As well as running a successful farm business he has taught and inspired thousands of people - farmers and the general public alike, including at the Royal Agricultural University and at FarmEd. And hopefully there’s lots in our conversation to inspire you today, so let’s get to it. 

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More about James Butterworth and Cotswold Market Garden: https://www.cotswoldmarketgarden.co.uk/