Embracing Diversity and Branding for Farm Resilience
Up horn, down corn – never has this statement been so true and never have the principles of regen ag been so ultimately important for profitability and the ironing out of the horrific bumps in the road ahead. 2024 saw us have almost double our annual rainfall average (measured since 1930) of 1130mm, that combined with the lack of light intensity and depressed combinable crop prices are a recipe for disaster when compared to just 2 years ago when everything looked so different for high input, high yield farming.
On 18th November 2020 we purchased 10 Hereford cross heifer calves and bucket reared them for the long term, these were going to be our suckler herd of the future, the following year we added 20 Angus heifer calves for the same purpose. I was once told that you bought chickens to lay and sell eggs every day, pigs every 4 months, sheep every 6 months and cows every 24 months. Spreading risk and income streams was the mission we were on after having all of the previous on the farm already. In hindsight we should have begun with the cattle and finished with the chickens to get ahead of the game, but we find out generally after the event.
Cows and calving, purchasing a bull etc has gone well and have realised the size of the herd explodes in size when you’re into the 3rd year of cows calving, we seem to have over stretched the size of barns and the amount of herbal leys we have on the rotation and therefore about to sell 41 head, just the simple task of a TB test to clear first! The beef market is at all-time highs and as the time comes nearer, the nerves that the market will ‘hold’ become ever more real! If all goes according to plan, the cattle and lambs this year will bail out what looks like the doom of the arable side of the business, much like the vineyard did in 2022 when everything pretty much the crops died of drought stress.
Diversity is still the main driving force of the farm and I find it odd that when you talk to so many about diversity the response is we shouldn’t need to, blaming supermarkets and the like. I see things slightly differently and not sure blame needs to be apportioned, but equally the easiest action to take. The whole world works around profit, the easiest way to produce profit is to become desirable in what you have to sell, which often leads to the formation of a ‘brand’ in essence a brand is profit, it differentiates you from competitors and makes it almost impossible to make accurate comparisons between goods and services. As farmers of course, everything ‘bought’ onto farm is a ‘brand’ ag chem companies get a good kicking, but rarely if ever do I hear the same rhetoric when discussing say banks, and their profits are enormous, but have you ever tried to compare their services? interest rates are one thing, but ‘hidden’ charges are just about everywhere and at different values.
Why is this important? Well, we essentially buy in brands, to generally produce a commodity (of which has zero branding) and total price takers, only for the first thing to happen to the commodity we sell to be turned into a brand as soon as humanly possible! A chicken, plucked, wrapped and put on a shelf is easily comparable and therefore profitability is much lower to say taking that chicken, dicing it up, shaping into a dinosaur and covering it with breadcrumbs, the value of the chicken has trebled in this process.
We have recently worked out that, not only do we need to take far more control of the ‘brands’ entering the farm but need to try and brand things leaving the farm. Wildfarmed wheat is a great start, but so much more can be done and the development of our ‘Added value alley’ where are producing ancient grain pasta, biltong, air dried meats and fruit biltong is showing the profit is in branding and not in chasing yield. I’m not sure any of this is that much different to what my great grandfather was doing, lots of diversity of income streams, selling local, by reputation of what he produced (branding). It was this generation that often tenants made enough from their produce to purchase their own farm, perhaps we need to look backwards in order to move forwards and realise that diversity is something we should all embrace whenever we seek profit and take ownership of your brand, it could and should build confidence and ultimately see a farms long term sustainability.
