What nature-friendly farming practices have you introduced on your farm?
It took us five years to understand that our conventional beef and sheep weren’t profitable. We reduced stocking numbers, restored hay meadows, blocked grips, and installed leaky dams. We now spend more on squirrel food than on feeding livestock - you won’t get out any more energy than you put in, so you have to work with what nature provides. If there isn’t enough natural grass, no amount of corrective economic action can make the farming any more profitable.
What have been the impacts of nature-friendly practices on your farm?
After changing our practices, the biodiversity increased – black grouse, red squirrels, otters, herons, and goosanders have all returned. Our farm is also recognised as having the highest number of species of bryophytes in North Yorkshire – some of which rely on the dung from cattle.
Will Brexit affect you and how?
I have no idea how Brexit will affect me. All I can do is run my business as effectively as possible. Every farmer should be finding ways to run their businesses based on less support than we’re getting currently. If we reduce inputs, we can work to the maximum sustainable output and become more resilient to Brexit as businesses.
What do you think of farming policy and what needs to change?
Public money for public goods is the way we need to be going, and it is more profitable to work in this way. Any future payments should be attached to the land manager and outcomes, and not to the farmland itself. One issue to tackle right now is the perception that the more you produce as a farmer, the more profit you generate. We need a policy recognition that production does not drive profitability. If we can get an acceptance of this, we’ll by default get a better environment.
What do you need from consumers – how can they help?
I think it’s up to farmers to educate consumers. We need good marketing, PR and branding so that consumers can have confidence that the product is of high value. If we control our costs, set a price, understand our assets, have a marketing plan and marketing budget, we will start running our nature-friendly farming businesses better.
What nature-friendly farming methods do you need financial support for?
We should be heading for a system based on payments by results: measures against which I can say “I’ve done well”, and I should be paid on those results. I want to understand carbon sequestration and the increase in biodiversity on my farm. I should also get paid more for what I do in a landscape-scale scheme with my neighbours.
How do your farming practices make you more resilient to climate change?
As a business, I am resilient because I am not trying to drive production. I am working with nature. Because I don’t have as much stock, I’m not putting pressure on silage or hay, and I’m self-sufficient for feed so I don’t need to purchase concentrates.
How will we get farming to change?
We need proper education through both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Top-down is about policymakers and agricultural colleges acknowledging that production doesn’t drive margin. From the bottom-up, there is an issue with peer pressure towards farmers when they try to change. Sometimes farmers’ wives or partners can bring an outside perspective and a different understanding of the need to change. We need to know our audiences.
What is the value of the NFFN?
NFFN brings together and expands the reach of like-minded, best practice farmers to promote management techniques to other farmers. Having enough funding to communicate all that NFFN stands for to famers and consumers is vital. In our industry, nobody communicates well enough or to the right audience, but we can tackle this through the network.
