Meet the ECC Team!

Energy Crops Consultancy has a wealth of experience, knowledge and expertise to pass on. With over twenty years of combined energy crop experience, our team has seen it all. Having worked with hundreds of farms over the years to gain extensive real-world insight, we’re well acquainted with all the challenges that a grower may face, but we have also been on the buyer side and know how they think.

Jason Schofield approached Energy Crops Consultancy in 2020 with a plan to set up a business allowing other farmers to share in the benefits that ECC brought to Jason’s 100 acres of willow on his 500-acre farm in Yorkshire.

Although Jason is a relative newcomer to the farming world, his business skills, gained through running multiple, highly successful companies over many years, have proved invaluable in his management of Old Oakwood Farm. Following the 2008 banking crisis, he was able to sell a highly successful archive storage business to a US investment agency in 2015 which in turn allowed him to purchase the farm and follow his boyhood dream of becoming a farmer. Old Oakwood Farm already had 12 acres of Willow planted – Jason took Neil’s advice and planted more, bringing his current energy crop total to 100 acres.

It was now obvious to Jason that ECC knew their stuff when it came to energy crops, and he realised that combining his skills in business growth and management with energy crop knowledge could bring this exciting way of farming to more growers across the UK.

It’s a no brainer. Spending a small amount of money to nearly double the potential yield of your crops – who’s not going to want to do that?

David joined ECCL as Technical Director in July 2022, bringing with him his in-depth knowledge of biomass crops and the implementation of modern agronomic practices to enhance their profitability. David is both BASIS & FACTS qualified and maintains his membership of the BASIS Professional Register.

After completing a B.Tec N.D.A. at Durham Agricultural College, David graduated from Newcastle University with B.Sc (Hons) Agriculture in 1991. He joined C.W.S. Agriculture (the farming division of the Co-op) as a Farm Management Trainee progressing to Estate Manager by the time he departed in 2003. During this time, David managed farms from Cambridgeshire in the South up to Perthshire in the North. He has managed some high-profile operations including the Coldham Estate in the Fens and the Castle Howard Estate in Yorkshire.

Joanne Cowburn MAAT is the Finance Manager and Administrator of Energy Crops Consultancy.

Joanne has years of experience in the renewable energy sector, having worked along side Jason on other successful enterprises including a renewable heat company and the farming business Old Oakwood Farm Estates.

I particularly like the environmental benefits of growing willow, such as early pollen for pollinators and the animals that it attracts, not to mention the reduction in flood risk. I have enjoyed the countryside for most of my life and I am definitely an outdoors person having 2 dogs, a horse and a harris hawk to keep me on my toes!