2025 Steering Committee

Andrew is an ex-dairy farmer from Wrexham, North Wales. Andrew diversified his farming business in 2018 to open Rackery Retreat following a health challenge. Rackery Retreat is a luxury glamping site on the North Wales Cheshire border consisting of three safari tents, the initial idea of the safari tents came from our first visit to the farming innovation event in 2017. Andrew now farms his land as an arable farmer and is currently the National president for the Holstein UK which is the largest cattle breeding society in the country. Social media is a huge part of Rackery Retreat with a following of 23,000 on Instagram. Andrew's daughter Larissa has opened a farm shop and cafe on the farm, where they now do 150 to 200 covers/day, and planning application has recently been submitted for a dog paddock which will be open to the public.

Lewis Pennicott is the Marketing Director at Cleveland and has been with the company since 2015. Lewis oversees all marketing activities for the business from advertising to social media, and manages an in-house team of marketing professionals to increase brand awareness and drive high quality traffic to the website.

He played a major role in creating Cleveland’s own self storage business, and has advised many self storage operators to help them grow. Drawing on his knowledge and diverse network, he has developed BOX+, a one-stop service that supports self storage businesses. In 2022, Lewis won ‘Young Media and Marketing Professional of the Year’ at the North East Young Professionals Awards.

Mark has been involved in the Vertical Farming & CEA industry for more than 10 years. He is the Founder & Chairman of UK Urban AgriTech (UKUAT), bringing together the leading companies, universities and individuals in the UK urban agritech industry. He is also the Founder of CEA Proteins, and does freelance consulting work across the industry. In his work he has dealt extensively with industry standardisation & interoperability, sustainability certification, vertical farming education and vertical farming policy. His expertise is in building networks and associations that maximise value for their members, and for the industry as a whole. Mark’s primary interest is in taking a systemic overview of how vertical farming can be integrated with other systems, to deliver on its promises of regenerative food production and resilient societies.

Rory is Principal Land Manager - National Land Acquisition Lead for the Environment Bank. He is a qualified Chartered Surveyor and Agricultural Valuer having trained as a Rural Surveyor before joining Environment Bank. As a Land Manager, Rory is responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with land owners looking to create Habitat Banks on their land. Working closely with the Environment Bank ecologists, Rory manages sites from initial registration through to live Habitat Banks. Rory’s role as Land Acquisition Lead also gives him national oversight on the pipeline of sites that Environment Bank onboard. He also leads on the targeting of land in high priority areas and drives the improvement of the offer that can be made to landowners.

Katie Williams is from Oswestry, Shropshire and has strong agricultural roots stemming from over ten years of involvement in Shropshire Young Farmers, having previously held the role of County Chairman's secretary. She studied Business Management with Events at Harper Adams University before progressing to work as an Events Manager. For the past two years, Katie has worked for Sykes Cottages. During her time with Sykes Cottages she has toured the length and breadth of Great Britain attending various agricultural and non-agricultural exhibitions speaking to thousands of happy customers and owners as well as planning a variety of in-house events for the company.