Introducing David Jonas, Chairman, and our new match-funding opportunity

October 2025

In this edition of our “Meet Our Team” series, we are introducing  you to the Chairman of our Board, David Jonas. Here you can read about his business experience as an entrepreneur, how that led to his current position at the farm, and the work he is currently doing. AND, do read to the end where he announces and describes imminent new farm developments and an exciting new fund-raising initiative which ANYONE can take part in!

Hi David, how long have you been involved with Tablehurst Farm?

I have lived in Forest Row since 1999, and first became a shareholder of the Tablehurst and Plaw Hatch Coop back in 2000. During the last two decades, as well as being a customer, I connected with Tablehurst Farm on some occasions whilst serving four years as a Wealden District Councillor and worked with the farm when there were national and community food campaign initiatives such as the lobby opposing the introduction of GM Food. 

When did you become Chairman of the Board at Tablehurst Farm and how did it come about? 

There was a seismic shift in my life in 2016. I sold most of the shares in the food wholesaling company, Vegetarian Express, that I founded in 1987 to an ethical private equity company. This liberation freed up my time to help other small businesses as a freelance management consultant, and to do some travelling. After a period of travelling, I realised that I had become disconnected from the Forest Row Community and looked for a way to reconnect. That’s when I spotted in a farm newsletter in 2023 that the Coop was looking for a new Treasurer, and I reached out to them.

Instead of offering me the Treasurer position, Robin Evans (Coop Chair) asked me if I was interested in providing managerial advice to Tablehurst Farm in light of my entrepreneurial background. At the time the farm was experiencing some difficulty navigating through a fall in trade following the Covid pandemic. So on a blue-sky sunny Saturday afternoon in November 2023, Robin and I sat at the top of the farm overlooking the valley and he suddenly asked “how would you like to chair the board?” Wow! That certainly ticked my “reconnection” box!

So what does “chairing the board” actually mean? You seem to be doing more than just chairing the monthly board meeting now. 

Well yes, that’s true. Titles don’t mean much in a small business, but if you press me to describe my position, I would say that I’m a full-time, voluntary Financial Director / Managing Director who also chairs the board meeting once a month. That’s because, after spending the first two months analysing the structure and finances of the business, I began to understand the full scale of the challenge that I had taken on.  

Until 2016 I had managed a fundamentally simple £9M national food distribution business with 50 employees, office, warehouse and 15 trucks. Tablehurst Farm is a much smaller £2.5M business with around 30 employees, but with the complexity of a £2.5 billion corporation!!  It is effectively 11 micro-businesses (count them yourself, including the various types of farming) all cross-supplying each other and/or sharing resources. If you draw a line for each internal cross-trading channel – it starts to resemble a bowl of spaghetti! And each one of those lines has to be diligently monitored and controlled for cost and margin. That’s essential in a challenging business sector such as farming to ensure financial security and sustainability.

So what happened after two months of analysis? 

The immediate challenge was to right the ship! Because in the previous year the business had made a £100K loss, and I had been dropped into the middle of a subsequent year which was heading for a repeat. But with some immediate corrections we managed to reduce the loss during that year to £69K. And this most recent Financial Year to March 2025 we celebrated true recovery with a £130K profit! 

That’s great! But surely there is much more work to do if the farm is to thrive into the future?

Absolutely. For any business enterprise to be financially viable and sustainable it needs to grow, and also renew and repair itself. Tablehurst Farm is an incredible success in the way that it has grown, evolved and diversified. Diversification is an important principle within the biodynamic ethos, which of course is our identity and purpose.

However, the business has to date not succeeded in repairing or renewing itself, and is now surrounded by approximately £1.5M worth of dilapidations. That’s an accountancy term for aged infrastructure and equipment such as crumbling barns and end of life machinery.

So how are you going to fix that?

By addressing TWO fundamental challenges: The first and most important is to fix the cause of the problem. Which is that the increasing complexity of such a diverse business has outgrown the skills and administration systems it possessed to reliably manage itself. So far, we’ve largely fixed that in arguably the most central (in the commercial sense) of the 11 micro-enterprises, the farm shop. But we still need to work through and fix or upgrade the skills and administration systems in all of the others.

What is the second challenge and what is the solution? 

Whilst in theory, the farm could eventually repair and renew itself once the administration has been upgraded, in practice that would take a VERY long time! So I’m kick-starting a substantial fundraising initiative to address the dilapidations, once and for all and for the LAST time before rendering the business financially SELF sufficient.  

What do you mean by “Kick-Start”?  

As a successful entrepreneur, I am privileged to be able to indulge in a degree of philanthropy. Between now and the end of January 2026, I am able to match-fund, and effectively double, the impact of any donations “like for like”, up to a maximum of £200K. In other words, we are aiming to raise £400K, which will put us in a great place to tackle the dilapidations on the farm. 

So I’m inviting anyone who loves this community enterprise as much as I do (more on why that is later!) to join me in this opportunity to enable it to have a bright future. To whatever capacity you are able, whether it be £10, £10K, £100K……. it’s the gesture that counts and will make all the difference.  

This time window is significant because January is when many people complete tax returns and consider Gift Aid. We will continue the match-funding programme into 2026 and beyond – for as long as it takes to meet our objectives.

What is Gift Aid exactly? 

For anyone who is not familiar with Gift Aid, we will publish an explanatory and promotional leaflet to be picked up from the shop shortly. For any tax payer, it’s a very beneficial government process whereby a charity can reclaim the income tax you have paid on your donation and add it to the value of your donation. 

Donations must be made to a registered charity for Gift Aid to be available. Therefore all donations in this match-funding should be made to our landlord, St. Anthony’s Trust. Please read on to see how to donate!

So can you share some detail as to how the money will be invested? 

Our first priorities are to build a new barn and surrounding supportive infrastructure to increase winter housing for our cattle, and a new milking parlour and dairy processing facility. We are currently over-dependent on the barns of neighbouring farms to house cattle in winter. And our first dairy that we built around six years ago was only intended as a proof of concept which, now proven, is very much under-capacity. 

There is an ever-increasing demand for the superior quality milk and dairy products that Tablehurst Farm provides. A new and bigger dairy will enable this, and the improved and expanded winter housing will result in reduced demand for winter bedding straw. All of this will increase financial stability and self-sufficiency. 

Then there is a long list of fencing, farm and domestic buildings, machinery and equipment repair and replacement to be addressed.

And if anyone reading this is interested in taking part, what should they do? 

We are ready to accept donations now! For anyone keen to support this initiative immediately, please donate through the below link - remember to choose “Tablehurst Farm Infrastucture (match fund)” on the drop down menu: 

https://www.nowdonate.com/checkout/l2l1o5w0w5d7smb0879w.

If you need some more time and information before making a decision, we will be publishing a leaflet which can be picked up from the shop, and on our website and social media very soon. Then we will hold an initial reception on Saturday 6^th December to present the opportunity and take a walk around the site of the new  development. We may even have begun construction of the new barn by then!

Lastly, what draws you to give time, energy and financial resources which are clearly over and beyond that of a chairman? Why should others support Tablehurst Farm?

Throughout my adult life I have been passionate about environmental sustainability, biodiversity and ethical food production. I ran a local Friends of the Earth group in Forest Row, local anti-GM food campaigns and served as the first Green Party Councillor on Wealden District Council. Now that I am blessed with no longer needing to earn a living, and have surplus material resources beyond the needs of a modest lifestyle, this is a natural progression that provides new purpose and application for me.  

Then there’s the joy of working with a fantastic team, and the opportunity to use my entrepreneurial skills to help navigate a wonderful 30-year-old project through a process of consolidation into its next stage of evolutionary growth. My reward is the satisfaction of success in delivering something beneficial to community and society, and I would be delighted to be joined by others who hold the same values and in a financial position to support Tablehurst Farm. 

And those who don’t feel able to give right now might consider writing a legacy in their will to St Anthony’s Trust for the longer-term future. This form of generosity has proven to be an ongoing and valuable benefit to our community farms, which will in turn benefit future generations in perpetuity. 

For more information on St. Anthony’s Trust, please visit: https://www.stanthonystrust.org/