Groove Armada’s Andy Cato on selling his music rights to take up regenerative farming

Andy Cato, of Groove Armada, reckons changing farming systems is "a bit more tricky" than DJing. Photo / Oli Scarff

By RNZ

Groove Armada’s Andy Cato says “pure madness” drove him to sell the rights to his music to pursue his passion for regenerative farming.

Cato, one-half of the British electronic dance duo with Tom Findlay, was coming back from a gig over 15 years ago when he read an article about the environmental costs of food production.

“It was pretty stark, and it had a line in it which said, ‘If you don’t like the system, don’t depend on it’. And that inspired me to start growing my own veg,” he told Katherine Ryan on RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

“I’d never planted a seed up to that point, but when I saw these seeds become plants, and plants become food, and the miraculous processes that allow that to happen, I just went down a spectacularly-sized rabbit hole.”

After more than three decades as a dance music legend, Cato sold his publishing rights - “a musician’s pension” - to finance a farm in France, where he was living at the time.

He wanted to become self-sufficient and master the kind of farming that collaborates with nature - that “is based on biology rather than chemistry”, as he puts it.

“If you’re bothered about health or biodiversity or climate change or water quality, all of the answers to those questions start with how we grow our food.”

Regenerative farming seeks to reverse the biodiversity loss that modern farming can cause with fertilisers and pesticides by changing how crops are managed.

It aims to reintroduce microbes, nutrients and carbon back into the soil.

“I can tell you that between trying to change the food system and DJing, changing the food system is a bit more tricky.”

Cato has moved back to the UK and now has 110 farms across the two countries are part of his regenerative farming movement.

He recently appeared on Clarkson’s Farm, taking over one of the fields and demonstrating his nature-driven methods.

Cato is taking a break from farm life for a four-date New Zealand tour, kicking off at the Gardens Music Festival in Auckland on March 1.

“Our DJ sets have evolved over time to be all the kind of Groove Armada tracks you’d want to hear in there, but reconditioned and re-edited, and that’s a kind of ongoing process,” he said of what to expect of the shows.

“It’s a distillation of, sort of, 30 years of house disco and everything in between.”

Cato said Groove Armada’s 2010 album, Black Light, is still the one they are most proud of the nine they’ve released, and a banger from that disc is the song that closes most of their shows.

“There’s no doubt Superstylin’ was a transcendental moment from the first time we played it on Brighton Beach, warming up for Fat Boy Slim.

“I think the reason why it’s still there now is it’s a pretty unusual combination of ingredients to start with, but also it just keeps getting reinvented, you know, so we’ve done a load of different versions.

“Once the groove gets inside you, it’s ... it’s a sort of out-of-body experience at its best.”

- RNZ