MV TELEGRAPH

King Charles III (then Prince Charles) visits Honeydale Farm in the Cotswolds region of England on June 22, 2021. The King is known to be a supporter of sustainable agriculture.

Toby Melville | Getty Images

When King Charles III visited Honeydale Farm in England’s Cotswolds region, one of his first remarks was: “Monoculture. That’s our problem.”

That’s the recollection of the farm’s owner Ian Wilkinson, as he walked down its drive with the then Prince Charles almost four years ago.

“And I nodded, and thought: ‘well, absolutely,'” Wilkinson told CNBC via video call.

Monoculture refers to the common practice of growing a single crop on a piece of land, sometimes year after year. Crops are grown in this way for efficiency, but critics say doing so depletes soil nutrients and increases the risk of disease.

The king — a longtime supporter of organic farming — visited Honeydale to learn about its focus on growing a wide variety of plants, a technique that aims to regenerate the soil.

Wilkinson studied agriculture in the 1970s when monoculture was encouraged after a post-World War II drive for the U.K. to import less food and become more self-sufficient.

“We were trained to produce more food and do it cheaply — and we didn’t have much regard for the environment, for nature,” Wilkinson said. Farmers relied on fertilizers made from petrochemicals, he added, and today, only around 3% of agricultural land in the U.K. is farmed organically, according to the most recent government statistics.

A long career at the Cotswold Seed Company, which supplies farms with seeds for wildflowers, grasses and root crops, meant Wilkinson heard from a lot of farmers, some of whom emphasized the need for self-sufficiency and for a diverse range of crops.

FarmED is a “demonstration” farm that is exploring regenerative agriculture practices, such as herbal leys, a method of adding nitrogen back into the soil.

FarmED

Wilkinson and his wife Celene bought the 107-acre Honeydale in 2013, and turned it into a demonstration farm — known as FarmED — that would explore how agriculture could be regenerative, rather than depleting the land.

When they bought it, cereal crops and grassland made up most of the farm, and the Wilkinsons introduced lambs and a wildflower area and planted 20,000 trees for birds to nest in. The farm’s orchard grows heritage apple varieties including one named “Blenheim Orange,” which dates back to around 1740. FarmED has also put in a natural flood management scheme. The farm sits in the Evenlode Valley, where the River Evenlode floods regularly, and the new scheme collects rainwater in a series of ponds connected by channels, aiming to prevent flooding.

Soil — a carbon store

“An over-extractive system in terms of soil health is a big problem,” Wilkinson told CNBC. “And soil health, of course, is linked to water quality and to pollution,” he said. Soil also sequesters — or stores — carbon, and in 2023 the British government noted that “intensive agriculture has caused arable soils to lose about 40 to 60% of their organic carbon.”

“We need to evolve into the next iteration of farming, still producing enough food for … a growing world population, but to do it in a way that is not so extractive and actually rebuilds the natural systems,” Wilkinson said.

To that end, FarmED, a nonprofit, is “rebuilding” the soil on the farm by focusing on a crop rotation using what’s known as a herbal ley, a mix of herbs, grasses and clovers that add nitrogen — a natural fertilizer — to the soil. A herb like chicory has long roots that can “mine” the soil for minerals, improving its health, while a grass like cocksfoot is drought resistant.

Heritage wheat and rye are grown over an eight-year rotation that uses no artificial fertilizers or sprays, and are compared to a “control” plot of wheat that is farmed in a traditional way — which does use artificial fertilizer — so FarmED can measure the health of the soil versus the regenerative plots. There are indications that the soil has been regenerated, with an improved structure and more earthworms, Wilkinson said.

FarmED co-founder Ian Wilkinson shows King Charles III (then Prince Charles) a sample of the soil on Honeydale Farm, on June 22, 2021.

Toby Melville | Getty Images

The ley is “managed” by livestock using a method called “mob-grazing,” where several animals graze a different, small, area of land each day. In doing so, they trample some of the plants back into the soil, creating a natural fertilizer along with their manure.

The method also means no single plant becomes dominant, which improves diversity, and once the soil’s fertility has improved over four years, wheat and oats are grown on the land.

Around 20% of FarmED’s visitors are farmers, some of whom have added herbal leys to their farms, while other visitors come from the food or related industries, or are members of the public. People can attend talks on topics such as beekeeping, foraging and woodworking, while a forthcoming session is titled “Goats for beginners.”

Wilkinson said people from different backgrounds visit, including those from pesticide companies or those who “feel really strongly about the world.” “Some companies are trying to figure out what regenerative agriculture means to them,” Wilkinson said.

“We simply say we’re not here to judge. We just know that agriculture has to move to the next era,” he said.

CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on Feb. 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

DOGE chief Elon Musk doubled down Monday night on his threat to fire federal employees who fail to submit a list of five or so of their workplace accomplishments over the past week.

“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk said about those workers in a post on his social media site X.

“Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” wrote Musk, whom President Donald Trump has tasked with slashing federal government spending and employee headcount.

The Tesla CEO’s renewed warning came hours after the Office of Personnel Management contradicted his initial threat, telling top human resources officers at departments across the government “that employee responses to the OPM email” demanding the accomplishment tally “is voluntary.”

OPM on Saturday sent out a blast email across the government, telling workers to submit that list by Monday night. That email did not say that employees — who do not work for OPM — had the option of not complying.

Musk on Saturday tweeted about OPM’s email, writing: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

In an X post on Monday, Musk wrote, “The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!”

“Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers,” wrote Musk, whose worker- and cost-cutting effort is known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”

A newly amended lawsuit filed over the weekend cited Musk’s first threat.

The filing in San Francisco federal court noted widespread confusion and controversy over whether employees must respond to OPM’s email demand.

Some major departments, including the Pentagon, told their employees to hold off on responding to OPM’s demand.

Others, including the Department of Health and Human Services and its Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services subsidiary, told their workers to comply.

The lawsuit was first filed Wednesday by a group of unions representing federal workers against OPM and acting OPM director Charles Ezell.

The suit asks a judge to enjoin OPM from terminating “tens of thousands of federal employees in contravention of federal constitutional and statutory law.

OPM on Feb 13 ordered federal agencies “across the government to effectively eliminate the category of probationary employee, by terminating tens of thousands of federal employees en masse,” the suit noted

The suit was amended after OPM in its email implemented a “new mandatory reporting program for all federal employees, the complaint said.

Read more CNBC politics coverage

OPM’s email carried the title, “What did you do last week?”

Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the email said. “Deadline is this Monday at 11:59 EST.”

Before Saturday, federal workers were not required to submit any reports on their work to OPM, the suit notes.

The amended lawsuit says that before Saturday, “no notice was published, in the Federal Register or anywhere else, regarding any OPM program, rule, policy, or regulation requiring all federal employees to provide a report regarding their work to OPM.”

OPM “has not complied with any procedural requirements … with respect to this new program,” the suit alleges.

And, the suit, noted, after OPM sent out the blast email to federal workers on Saturday, “at least some federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began telling their employees not to respond to this OPM surprise request.”

In addition to the FBI, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the State Department, and national intelligence agencies have instructed their employees not to immediately respond to OPM’s email.

But the Transportation Department has told employees to respond, according to an email obtained by NBC News on Monday.

“Please also ensure that you exclude classified information, links, and attachments,” the email says.

A judge has scheduled a hearing for Thursday afternoon on the unions’ request for a temporary restraining order blocking the mass terminations.

Musk’s threats to terminate workers who fail to comply was condemned by Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions suing OPM.

“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump Administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people,” Kelley said in a statement.

“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” Kelley said.