Supporting livestock in the arable rotation – Farmers Guardian

With stacking evidence showing the benefits of livestock within the arable rotation to include improved soil health and weed management, the aim of livestock within the rotation is to increase the productivity of arable fields, particularly those identified as under-performing, according to AHDB.

However, in much of the country where arable cropping predominates, getting started with livestock presents two main challenges: finding a suitable workforce with experience to run a sheep or beef enterprise and the large investment required when adapting buildings and purchasing the stock.

Despite the high degree of difficulty, this need not be an immovable obstacle and one answer might be providing a bed and breakfast-style enterprise.

An example in parts of Wiltshire, Dorset and Hampshire, is nomadic sheep flock entrepreneur Tim White. Since 2008, without any now-shrinking Basic Payment Scheme support, this first generation grazier has made sufficient profit from sheep to have increased ewe numbers many times over, all on handshake-based lets, some for only part of the year to fit in with cropping, with arable farming hosts.

Of course, many arable farmers may prefer beef cattle. This option is being taken by Nick and Sue Marris, alongside agronomist son Will, at Valley Farm near Swinderby, Lincolnshire, where they grow a fairly typical rotation of winter wheat, winter and spring barley, beans, grass and herbal leys.

Their way of addressing the knowledge gap is a herd of B&B beef that comes with on-call advisory support and is financed by the Buitelaar Group, which specialises in connecting farmers and consumers by providing sustainable supply chain solutions.

Nick Marris says: “Clearly, avoiding the working capital requirement to buy the cattle is a significant factor, but as it turns out, the guidance is equally valuable.”

Cattle arrive from a specialist rearing unit as four-month-old weaned calves weighing 150kg minimum liveweight and matched for group consistency. Their winter housing at Valley Farm is an existing shed, DIY-adapted based on guidance from the B&B beef company. The farm pays for feed and bedding, workforce and veterinary provision, and necessary other consumables such as essential trace elements and mineral supplementation.

The farm gets paid for the group’s total liveweight gained at an agreed minimum rate set at the outset. If between arrival and departure market prices of finished beef have risen, the payment rate is topped up via an open book formula, but if they’ve dropped it is not discounted.

Unsurprisingly, Will’s work involves many and varied regenerative farming plans with clients. At the family homestead, he picks out for particular attention the way herbal leys in their Country Stewardship programme and the beef herd are good partners.

“As winter feed, we have been able to make some great big bale silage off the leys.

“And last summer, grazing the herd on some as yet unimproved pasture on light soil has helped increase soil organic matter content. In the field, for example, we noticed that dung pats were being broken down quickly by dung beetles,” he says.

Pointing out the business gains, Nick says: “At low risk, this is diversifying our income sources, which at the very least means less chance of being worse off. Also, over the past five to 10 years, our pathway to what we now call regenerative farming had already resulted in many more butterflies and flying insects, bird species and numbers, grey partridge and brown hares.”