Looking Beyond the Cheese: What We Learned from Our Global Farm Metric Trial
When we choose to work with a given cheese at Neal's Yard Dairy, flavour has always come first, but flavour has never been the only thing that matters. For nearly fifty years we've worked closely with independent cheesemakers, many of whom also farm the animals that produce the milk for their cheese. We visit their farms, spend time in their dairies, taste with them, and build relationships that often span decades. Our decisions about the cheeses we represent have always been shaped by a holistic understanding of the businesses behind them.
At the same time, we recognise that the questions people ask about food are changing. More and more of our customers want to understand not only how a cheese tastes, but how it was produced. What impact does a farm have on wildlife? How are animals managed? How resilient is the business? What contribution does it make to its local community? These are important questions, but they aren't easy ones to answer.
Why the Global Farm Metric?
For several years we've been interested in finding better ways to understand and communicate the environmental and social dimensions of the farming systems behind the cheeses we sell.
Through our longstanding relationship with Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust, and the many conversations we've shared around his kitchen table during visits to his farm in Wales to select Hafod Cheddar, we became aware of the work underway to develop the Global Farm Metric (GFM).
Rather than focusing on a single measure of sustainability, such as greenhouse gas emissions or soil carbon, the Global Farm Metric was designed to look at farming as a whole system. It assesses farms across twelve interconnected areas covering environmental, social and economic dimensions, recognising that none of these can really be understood in isolation.
That philosophy immediately appealed to us: farming is complex, and we felt any meaningful conversation about sustainability needs to reflect that complexity rather than reduce it to a single number.
So, in 2025, we invited every farmhouse cheesemaker who supplies Neal's Yard Dairy—that is, every cheesemaker who farms their own animals—to take part in a trial of the Global Farm Metric.
Twelve producers chose to participate. Over the following months, each invested many hours gathering information about their businesses, working through the assessment with support from the GFM team and, importantly, providing feedback that helped shape the next iteration of the Global Farm Metric assessment itself.
Alongside the trial, we also worked closely with Sara Hall, a farmer, former cheesemonger and PhD researcher at the University of Bristol, whose own research into dairy farming systems uses the Global Farm Metric framework. Her expertise proved invaluable, both in supporting participating farms and in helping us go into more detail and achieve a more nuanced interpretation of the data.
What were we hoping to learn?
Like many people, we began the project wondering whether a holistic metric might help us compare the farms that supply our cheeses and communicate those differences more clearly to customers. Could we benchmark our suppliers against other dairy farms? Could we identify particular strengths across our supply base? Could this become part of the way we tell the stories behind our cheeses?
As the project progressed, we discovered that these questions were both more interesting, and much harder to answer, than we'd imagined.
Complexity isn't a problem: it's the point
One of the biggest lessons from the trial was just how different farming systems can be, even when they are producing essentially the same thing: milk for cheese.
Some farms operate on marginal upland pasture; others on richer lowland grassland. Some are highly extensive, while others are more intensive. They differ in their soils, climate, biodiversity, infrastructure, labour, markets and long-term goals. The more closely we looked at the data, the more we realised that comparing one farm directly with another could sometimes feel like comparing apples with oranges.
Initially, we imagined the project might produce a clear set of scores that would allow straightforward comparisons between farms. Instead, it became apparent that reducing highly diverse farming systems to a league table would risk obscuring as much as it revealed.
That wasn't necessarily a failure of the metric. If anything, it reinforced one of the central ideas behind the Global Farm Metric: sustainability cannot be captured by any single measurement.
We also came to appreciate another important point. Any assessment represents a snapshot in time. Equally important is the direction in which a farm is travelling. A business actively investing in improving biodiversity, water management, animal welfare or economic resilience may deserve just as much recognition as one that already performs strongly in those areas.
What did the data show?
Although we don't believe these results should be used to rank farms against one another, the benchmarking exercise did reveal some encouraging patterns.
The GFM team compared our twelve participating farms against a broader group of seventy-one farms using the same version of the assessment across multiple farming systems (livestock, dairy, and mixed) as well as Sara Hall's University of Bristol research cohort of twenty-two dairy farms.
Across several categories (including Nature, Livestock, Community, Governance, Resources and Public Goods Delivery) our participating farms generally achieved higher average scores than the comparison groups.
These comparisons provide useful context, but perhaps more importantly they reinforce something we've long believed: many of the independent cheesemakers we work with have spent years investing in the health of their farms, their animals and their local communities.
Above: average public goods scores of NYD supplier farms (dark bars) compared to all GFM trial participant farms.
Above: average NYD farm scores by GFM category (dark bars) compared to all GFM trial participant farms.
Learning how to communicate sustainability honestly
Alongside the farm assessments, we also surveyed our own colleagues and customers to understand what kinds of information people find most valuable when buying cheese.
Above: results of a survey of NYD customers, colleagues, and members of the public about the role of sustainability credentials in their buying decisions (Spring 2025)
Taste remains the primary reason people choose a cheese, but many customers also told us that how that cheese was produced and the values of the businesses behind it are also very important to them when making buying decisions.
At the same time, the project reminded us just how difficult it is to translate complex data into something that is both meaningful and honest. It would have been easy to reduce the results to a handful of headline figures or declare category "winners". But the more we explored the data, the less comfortable we became with oversimplifying it. By and large, the results clustered closely together, and small numerical differences often didn't reflect meaningful differences in farming practice.
Instead, we came away with a renewed appreciation that communicating sustainability responsibly requires as much judgement as it does data.
Where do we go from here?
Perhaps the most valuable outcome of the trial wasn't identifying the "best" farms, but recognising the commitment shown by the producers who took part. Completing the Global Farm Metric requires a significant investment of time and reflection. Every participating cheesemaker chose to engage openly with the process, examine both the strengths and vulnerabilities of their farming system, and help improve the assessment for future users. We think that's worth talking about and celebrating.
Over the coming months we'll begin highlighting participating producers across our website and in our shops, using the Global Farm Metric logo as a signpost to help customers discover the cheeses whose makers took part in the trial and encouraging conversations about the farming systems behind them. We'll also be launching a special Global Farm Metric cheese selection this summer, followed by a September Cheese of the Month selection featuring more participating producers. In addition, customers will be able to filter the cheeses on our website according to trial participation, to select efficiently for these cheeses if they so choose.
The trial has also changed how we think about collecting environmental information in the future. Rather than asking every producer to complete increasingly detailed assessments, we're now exploring whether a smaller number of carefully chosen, genuinely meaningful indicators could provide valuable insights while placing less burden on busy farmers.
This project hasn't given us all the answers, and we never expected it would. What it has given us is a deeper appreciation of the richness and diversity of the farming systems behind the cheeses we sell, and of how difficult, but worthwhile, it is to communicate that complexity honestly. We look forward to continuing the journey.