Peter is joined by Dorset dairy farmer Ian Baggs and Adele Jones, Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trust to discuss different ways of farming to adapt to a changing climate.
In this episode Peter talks to Dorset dairy farmer Ian Baggs and Adele Jones, Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trust to discuss different ways of farming to adapt to a changing climate.
In this second series of Farming Focus we're asking the question 'does my farm have a future?'.
Farming Focus is the podcast for farmers in the South West of England, but is relevant for farmers outside of the region or indeed anyone in the wider industry or who has an interest in food and farming.
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Timestamps
00:01 Cornish Mutual jingle
00:14 Peter Green introduces the show
00:48 Peter's Future Farm in 60 seconds
02:07 Peter introduces today's guests
02:29 Ian Baggs introduces himself and his family's farm.
03:30 Adele Jones introduces herself and the Sustainable Food Trust
04:57 What impact has Ian seen on his farm that could signify a more volatile climate?
07:00 Why is it important that all farmers think about preparing their farm for the future in terms of more volatile weather?
08:30 Why should farmers question and challenge what they do?
10:07 Growing the right plant in the right place.
14:30 How can Ian's learnings be applied to other farms?
17:30 The Global Farm Metric
20:50 jingle
20:57 Showstoppers
23:10 Practical tips to farmers
25:25 Words - openness and being vulnerable; resilience; bravery; open to new ways of thinking; be prepared to change; be happy and fulfilled
27:10 Peter wraps up.
Cornish Mutual. Farming insurance experts.
I'm Peter Green and welcome to this bonus episode of Farming Focus which is linked to episode 7 of the show. If you haven't already done so you simply must go back to episode 7 to listen to all of that main episode so that you get the most from this bonus. We're now going to hear from Dorset farmer and Nuffield scholar Ian Baggs who did a Nuffield scholarship you.
on the subject of sustainable forage cropping for dairy cattle in the face of climate change challenges. Ian, why did you want to apply for a Nuffield scholarship? So I think it was around 2020 I applied. Our business was in a challenging place. So I returned to the business in the midst of the 2016 milk price crisis where milk.
It's 16 per liter. We were recently talking about the very recent recession of 23 24 where milk it's sort of 32 per liter. So double the price of the recession that was back in 2016. So only eight years ago. So economically, it was really difficult. And the first sort of four or five seasons that I was really full time farming, we had five out of five years, four droughts, like really dry summers, where I come back to grass after having grazed it say 40, 40 days ago, and a 40 day rest, and I come back and there was just no grass left.
And I just thought, there must be another way we need to grow more forage, we need more tons of dry matter per hectare. And I've got to find a way to do it, or the future is not pretty. So you'd seen that bottleneck in your system. Yeah. That was what I perceived as the major bottleneck, but the whole journey made me realize that actually there are so many more pieces of the puzzle changing the business that's been the greatest challenge, but also the greatest reward.
Yeah. Yeah. So a real need to change was, was, was the driver. So tell us about, um, your Nuffield study and your main findings. Yeah, sure, sure. And before I do, um, I must say it was a brilliant experience and I really do thank Nuffield for selecting me and especially thank the Trahane Trust and all those involved with that trust, a trust which works to promote and enhance the British dairy industry.
They've just released a new website so people can Google that and check that out, but they were the sponsor for my Nuffield. In terms of the main findings, the first one I would say is you've got to think about your system. What am I trying to achieve and how do I, what's the best way to run this farm?
Um, so for example, I hadn't realized before going that in Australia and New Zealand, no dairy farm out there has a cubicle shed. Like, out of a hundred farms, maybe one might have a cubicle shed. Here in Britain, we've all got cubicle sheds, and slurry pits, and slurry scraper tractors, and slurry stirrers, and all of that fuss.
They don't have that out there. They just have one building, maybe two, it's a little calf shed for the first two weeks that the calves are alive, uh, and then they're outside forever. And they have a milking shed with a milking parlour and a bulk tank, and that is it. And it made me realise, wow, they've really set up their city outdoors.
And they're much closer to the equator. It's a different climate and a different context, but it made me think that's how they can produce milk so much cheaper than most British farms. And they do get paid about 10 percent lower over a 10 year average because they've got so much less infrastructure.
You've got to see the natural benefits of your farm. I saw this time and again, I went and met with Andre van Barneveld, who runs Gray's Consultancy in Ireland and UK, he's doing an AHDB talk, Clover, in the South West soon, so Google that if you're interested. He was farming in an area with 450mm of rainfall, in old money, that's 18 inches.
People in Cornwall regularly get 50 inches of rainfall. Me, I complain about being a dry farmer. We get 28 to 30 inches of rainfall. And he was farming profitably on 18 inches of rainfall through a well set up system, herbal lays, summer brassicas, and a flying herd with second lactation and older cows that produce more milk and are more efficient at converting dry matter into milk than a heifer, which is, only gives perhaps 75 percent of the yield.
There are other farmers I could name, Paul Bethune as well in North Victoria, a really dry, difficult farm, difficult farming area. Tremendous job of seizing his opportunities such as um, bought in feed where others wouldn't want it because he was the only dairy around, and extensive grazing and good irrigation.
Reduce your overheads and reduce your costs. So cost, be it overhead or variable costs, so inputs, things like fertilizer or cake, they all increase your risk. The more money you spend, the more you need to make. Every pound you spend, you need to make that pound back before you're left with any margin. And the game we're playing is, convert something you sell on your farm, uh, you can grow on your farm, apologies, into something you can sell, meat, milk, grain, and leave yourself with as much margin as you possibly can.
Anything else is superfluous, be it cake, fertilizer, bills, etc. Those things may be necessary. But you can guarantee yourself that everybody else in the supply chain will benefit when they sell you those services. You cannot guarantee that you will benefit. So it's super important that you check that you're going to be on the upside of any, any, any expenditure.
So all those things about systems. And there are some specifics around the crops, uh, the types of ways to feed cows that we can touch on later. But. Ultimately, it's about setting yourself, your business and your farm up success. And that means thinking about what your natural strengths are. And in Cornwall, I should say, whether, you know, obviously this, this podcast comes out of the Southwest, most farms generally have Good rainfall, a mild winter climate, so cool season perennials, perennial ryegrass, white clover, timothy, plenty of grazing for livestock businesses is a real win.
And for arable and vegetable cropping businesses, it's that natural climate. That's your USP. That's what you've got that other places in the world don't have. Seize it and make it work. I really like that point about taking the drawbacks with your situation and turning them into opportunities. Can you take us through some specific examples of the farmers that you visited and and what you learned on these visits?
Um, there were so many, so it's really hard to pick a choice for you. What I would say is I'm. A grazer. I am a dairy farmer and we have beef cattle to store cattle our dairy crosses So that mean and also i'm not a confinement system. I do enjoy grazing cattle outside So for me, I was looking at that kind of system.
So I wasn't going to california See those large intensive sort of uh, 5000 plus cow units with very very high yields and holsteins total expressions because You Not to say that's wrong, but that isn't my bag. Yeah. It's what's relevant for your context, isn't it? Yeah, sure. And also your, your farm, your context, and also actually what you enjoy.
One farmer I went to in Northern Victoria, which I found fascinating, it was an organic farm, really enjoyed the visit. And so he was organic. He was all irrigation because without irrigation in Northern Victoria, you do not have a dairy farm. You just don't, there's just not enough. Uh natural rainfall to enable a dairy farming system even on a very extensive basis So they've all got massive irrigation and uh this guy the water market's really interesting whole nother subject But he would forward contract his water.
So he had a fixed price for water. Let's say 250 a megaliter he fixed his water to de risk his business. So he's got fixed amount Sometimes he's paying over the odds because he's de risked. So yes through a broker. He's paying slightly more but he's fixed his water And then he uses that to grow crops, three crops, all organic, remember.
Permanent pasture, which is a mixture of species, uh, for that warm, designed for that warm climate, mostly grasses and clovers that we might not have heard of. Then he's growing, uh, maize, he's growing lucerne. And he also buys in vetch silage, which is a very common arable break crop over there. He said to me, you've got to weigh up the economics.
The permanent pastures is cheap. The maize is expensive because there's a lot of harvesting and it's an annual. It's not a perennial plant. Every year you're planting it. It yields well. So, you might say, well, why don't you just grow all permanent pasture? Uh, because you can graze it. Obviously, he's having to bring in silage as well.
So, there's a harvesting logistical challenge. But he explained to me, if you want to grow one ton of dry matter, With Lucerne, with permanent pasture, you need three megalitres of water. That's how much to grow one tonne of dry matter. If you want to grow one tonne of dry matter with Lucerne, you need only two megalitres of irrigated water.
And if you want to grow one tonne of dry matter, and that's also a perennial, so no reseeding costs last for five or ten years, a stand with family. If you want to grow One tonne of dry matter with maize, you only need one litre of, uh, one megalitre of water. So, maize is three fold what permanent pasture is, and twice as water efficient as lucerne.
So it's this piece about looking at your bottlenecks, again, looking at your drawbacks, and what can you make them an opportunity. And de risking your business, having the right crops, having that balance, and most importantly, running your numbers. Very strong on doing this budget, and all of the best farmers I met, they're strong on doing that budget.
You really do have to learn to love numbers. But another thing I should highlight, every farm in Australia, every farm, and that's Tasmania, um, and, and Victoria, every farm in New Zealand, and that was all the way through the South and the North Islands, that are dairy herds, Every single one was block carving.
Not necessarily the same block. They put the block to what suited their climate. So, Tasmania is further away from the equator, closer to the Antarctic, so a cooler climate. But they're all spring block carving. New Zealand, they were all spring block carving. South Victoria, Gippsland, They are all spring block carving.
North Victoria, where it was really hot and dry and relied totally on irrigation, and no natural rainfall to speak of, um, they are all autumn block carving, because they can graze through the winter, because their winter isn't really a winter, it's like 20 degrees, you know. So that says to me block carving on a grazing based system.
It is the way to go because it's so much easier to manage cows when they're all on a similar plane of nutrition, treat them as a herd. In the UK, about 75%, 80 percent of farmers, and I don't know in terms of literage output, but in terms of number of farmers, dairy farmers, forgive me for the beef and sheep and cropping farmers for talking about this, uh, but it is my interest.
Um, they're all year round carving. So every week of the year, they've got cows calving every week of the year. They're trying to breed cows. They've got all stages of lactation, different energy demands in the herd, and they have to do all sorts of fancy different newfangled things, right? Target better quality feed to the cows in early and mid lactation.
And it just introduces complexity. And if you want an easy life and potentially more profitable. You want to strive for simplicity, the greatest to put operators, make it look easy, and block carving really does that. Went to some really interesting farms in the, uh, uh, farmers in the, in middle and south of France, but none of them grown perennial ryegrass.
Got laughed at when I suggested it, it's just too hot, it's too dry, it won't work, so they grow different species. Um, so I found that really interesting. There are, ground down one particular farmer, Uh, in Normandy, his, his shtick is really low overheads. The size of a dairy farm in France is different. So, I think, sort of, in the UK, we're about 150 cows per dairy farmer.
Uh, on, on each dairy farm, about 150, 160 average, I think. In New Zealand, I would imagine it'd be 300, 400 cows plus, and a lot of, sort of, 800 cow, 1, 000 cow grazing herds. Same in Australia, you go to France, so we're at 150, they're at 400 plus. You go to France, it's 70 cows, less than half the number of cows, and they can still make a comfortable living, dairy farming.
And I find that inspirational. We've kind of lost our way, thinking bigger is better all the time. So perhaps where the UK was 30 years ago, maybe, something like that. Yeah, absolutely. And that comes down to really strong support for their farmers, Attachment of the land, lower land prices, a lot lower land prices.
So I was told of land prices in the region of sort of 1, 500, 2, 000 an acre. You're not going to find that in the UK. It's, it's maybe tenfold that, um, for the right ground. Sometimes small is beautiful and it can't work. Anyway, this particular farmer's Erika on that in Normandy, his thing was spend no money, spend as little as possible, uh, let the cow do the work.
And he hadn't done a reseed in, in 10 years. And the soil biology was really working for him. He did not, he was totally against reseeding. I said to him, do you top for weeds or spray? No, totally organic. And does he top? Maybe if he's got somebody coming in to cut some silage or hay, he'll send them over around one or two paddocks.
But no, it's not a routine thing. So by reducing all of that cost, he's focusing on, let the cow do the work. Leave yourself with that margin at the end of it. Brilliant. Ian, thank you so much for your thoughts there. We've got so much great stuff. That's come from both the main episode and the bonus episode.
And, uh, yeah, I'm sure, uh, the listeners join me and thank you very much for your time and your thoughts. Pleasure. I hope it was useful. Thank you, Peter. Lovely to talk to you again. Cornish Mutual. Farming insurance experts.
Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Farming Focus. If you haven't already, make sure that you subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so that you don't miss any episodes in the series.