Team Farming

I've been off on my travels again this week, a non stop tour of Wales, Cheshire, Oxfordshire and Reading. It was a great opportunity to catch up with old and new friends who all showed me great hospitality.
First stop was near Whitchurch with Linda and Brian who in the dim and distant past shared damp and grotty lodgings with me when at college. Linda was an AMBA and Brian completed a HND agriculture. After spending 10 years tractor driving they set up their own business with a digger and a little tractor building patios, horse rings, fencng and maintaining suermarket grounds. When their 3 girls were young Linda started as a child minder and now has a constant stream of children clients. Brian has a simple business plan, not going over the VAT limit (making 20% cheaper the other contractors), doing most of the work himself, not employing anybody and working very hard. Since he started he has never been short of work and together they have renovated an old farmhouse and have a smallholding of 6 acres where the children have ponies, ducks and chickens, they fatten a few pigs, sell some silage and have an enviable veg garden.
After meeting with fellow Nuffield Scholar Michael and buying a map we travelled to Pwllheli to visit Rhys, a grazing evangalist who runs a herd of 1000 cows. It just so happens that Rhys is also writing a nuffield report on Equity partnerships. Rhys farms in a share farm arrangement that is popular in New Zealand where the land owner takes a share of the risk and the milker has access to capital and borrowing. The key to Rhys system seemed to be the trust between the partners in the share arrangement and he seems to have found the right opportunity to use his attention to detail to produce some pretty impressive results. Michael is writing a grazing blog all about grass so if you are really interested I am sure he will write at length about our visit.
Next stop was Snowdon where Arwyn is farm manager for the National Trust on a farm that has much history and has a wild untamed beauty. Here farming is not just about the results but also about the local community and the environment, relying on subsidy payment to stay in profit, but providing employment to a team of skilled shepherds and farm workers. Arwyn heads and guides this team maintaining a landscape that people care passionately about.
After a brief stop at Chestnut meats where Marnie the goat lady fed us goat sausages, I visited another old college friend Mr Nurse. David is a first generation farmer who always wanted to milk cows, when his precollege boss wanted to retire he was offered the opportunity to become the tenant of 125 acres of prime Cheshire farmland. Buying the landlords 100 cows and equipment and taking on huge borrowings David has worked hard to pay back much of what he owed and has made a profit even in years when the milk price has poor. Again the system is nothing complicated, but by sheer determination and commitment it has worked. David works on his own, with occasonal partime help and a relief milker once a month. If you have milked cows or worked on a farm you will understand the strength of character this requires and I admire all David has achieved. David's lucky break has been belonging to a local co-op of dairy farmers that his landlord had been a founder member. This co-op uses its buying power to negiotiate feed and fertilizer prices, has regular bench marking amongst the members, farm walks and visits and even gives access to small loans for capital improvements.
After a brief stop in Oxfordshire to cuddle my beautiful new Nephew, I meet with George Dunn of the Tenants Farmers Association (TFA). The TFA was formed in 1981 by a group of farmers who felt that their interests were not being forcefully represented by existing bodies. The TFA is the only organisation dedicated to the agricultural tenanted sector and is the authentic voice on behalf of tenant farmers. The TFA lobbies at all levels of Government and gives professional advice to its members.
So then back to Devon where Nevil and the children have been getting ready for Open Farm Sunday. This mainly envolves Nevil and Elsa tidying up and the rest getting very excited about the opportunity to show people 'Their Farm'.
So a tour of different farms with one thing in common team work. The husband wife team, the business partnership, the mentoring support of a co-op, the help of a support organisation or the crazy family team I love so much at home. Maybe this could be one of the keys to a successful farm and business. I have a feeling that at last I am finding something to put in my Nuffield report!

More ramblings from the USA

One of the most interesting things on my visit to the USA was having a look round some of the biggest and best examples of Pennsylvanian agriculture. One fascinating visit was to Mason Dixon Farms, a large dairy herd of 4000 cows. This was very much a family farm, but on a huge scale. The problems for US dairy farmers are the same as in Devon, with falling milk price and volatility of inputs making an industry that no longer can support a secure income. To overcome this Mason Dixon farms had slashed the costs of production and were producing milk at around half the cost of average US dairies. The impressive scale of how they did this was amazing. On arriving we were welcomed into the farm cinema to see a movie of the Dick Wainwright story of success, the key we were told was innovation and adaptability. In summary that innovation was ‘to be big,’ big tractors, mowers, fields and livestock numbers. We were looking at equipment that you would struggle to move down the A30 let alone down some of our Devon farm lanes. We were then given a tour of the farm which meant that we were driven by coach through the cattle housing! Here the cows were kept in groups of 150 cows, in cubicles and milked by robots. They had very little handling by humans which apparently suits the cows better. Welfare was proved to be excellent, with a vet employed on site. The average number of lactations per cow was 3 which I believe was the national average. All the feed was grown by the farm and mainly based round a maize diet and an anaerobic digester provided the electricity to run the farm and export some to the national grid. So a pretty impressive system, but I, along with most of the British definitely did not feel comfortable with that system. The cows never went outside, they were tail docked, the cubicles were smaller than allowed in the UK and the sheer scale just seemed to be the wrong way to produce milk.

Of course this is now being debated in the UK with the plans for the super dairy in Lincolnshire causing a lot of divided opinion. Here in the South West we are good at producing grass and milk. Although many dairy farms have been sold up, there are still some successful businesses that have adapted and innovated. But their way of cutting the costs of production is by utilising what we have got and maximising the milk from grass. Sometimes this is organically but normally this is using organic principles combined with more conventional methods. Often these farms are 150 to 200 cow herds employing 3 or 4 people and being a positive part of the local community. As a consumer I want to be paying enough to ensure that my milk is coming from cows that go outside and I think that is what the debate has to be about, if consumers want a food produced in a certain way they have to be prepared to pay for it. It will be interesting to see how debate progresses!

If anybody recognises this post then you're right, it was first published in Drewsteington Parish post titled View from The Farm. But it was me that wrote that, so now the worst kept secret is out and you all know who I am!