Farmers Weekly Awards 2026: Lifetime Achievement winner

Dr Alastair Leake is Farmers Weekly’s 2026 Lifetime Achievement winner.

Alastair has devoted his career to advancing understanding of how to combine productive farming with biodiversity enhancement. 

As director of policy for the GWCT charity and head of its 320ha research and demonstration farm in Leicestershire, the Allerton Project, his tireless work over 25 years has identified management practices that deliver multiple benefits to rural landscapes, then shared this through advisory and educational activities. 

See also: FW Awards 2026: Meet the finalists

His technical and practical knowledge, intellectual curiosity and rigour, and passion for the subject have won awards and been instrumental in making Loddington a pioneering blueprint.

Focusing on issues as varied as agri-environment schemes and natural capital accounting, considering soil, water, woodland and environmental habitats, his work has shaped how the nation builds farmland resilience.

Allerton’s many thousands of visitors include businesses, policymakers, NGOs, regulators, farmers, advisors, students and schools.  

Having grown up on the outskirts of Glasgow, he studied Horticultural Science at the University of Reading, then read a PhD in Organic and Integrated Farming Systems at Leicester University. Before heading to Allerton in 2001, he worked for 20 years for Co-operative Farms – initially as a production manager in glasshouse salad crops specialising in IPM, then heading up the company’s farming systems research. 

Jeremy Finnis, chairman of the GWCT, says: “I am never less than impressed by his acuity, breadth of knowledge and practical know-how.  

“The GWCT has been fortunate indeed to benefit from Alastair’s expertise, professionalism and dedication for so many years, not only in pioneering such innovations as flower-rich field margins and the Hedgerow Carbon Code, but also in his work on countryside policy, explaining to those in positions of influence how practical land management can benefit wildlife while producing food efficiently.”

Phil Jarvis, a former farm manager at Loddington, says: “I have seen first-hand the passion, expertise, and commitment he brings to balancing agricultural production with environmental enhancement.

“His ability to communicate complex landscape and land management issues, whether to farmers in the field or politicians in the corridors of Westminster, is second to none.

“The breadth of subjects he masters, combined with his talent for translating complex research into practical and accessible insights, makes him a true champion of the countryside. He encourages others to question the conventional and explore what might be possible.”

Agronomist, technical manager and former member of the government’s Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food for more than 20 years, Debbie Winstanley says this ability to think in a unique way is one of his great attributes.

“He gets on with the job and is totally tenacious, but is also very brave and in some ways iconoclastic.”

Allerton’s great triumph, adds Debbie, is the way it motivates farmers to change practices by demonstrating the benefits in a way they can see and relate to. 

“Alastair worked out years before it became trendy that the only way to engage with farmers and policymakers is to lay out the data, so he set about collecting data for ideas that he knew needed support to change.

“Just one example was his work on managing factors that determine the success of songbirds, such as cover crops.

“As a result, we now understand about the ‘hungry gap’ for birds in late winter and how important it is to feed through this.

“He has hosted thousands of visitors at Allerton, right across the food supply chain, driving so much positive change.”