Surviving or Thriving? Farms

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Because Vivint adjusts your thermostat when it knows you're out, it's a smarter way to save. When Vivint guards your packages from Prowlers, it's a smarter way to protect. And when you can lock the doors and dim the lights for movie night with a single tap, Well, that's a smarter way to live. To get the smarter home system that just gets you, go to Vivint.com or call 1-855-4-VIVINT. Live intelligently.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Before COVID, we was making little or no profit on the farm, and now the farm's thriving. Obviously to diversify, you've got to invest. So there's been big investment to get to where we are. There's lots of costs increasing all the time. What we cannot have... is a country that becomes farm shop Britain, whereby we are just producing food for a small proportion of society. We've got to have affordable food for everybody, whatever budget they're on.

The rising costs have been an absolute nightmare. There's no option for commercial farmers to be able to say, I really do need a little bit more money because I'm struggling to pay my bills. It's not how that works. The rising cost of food has been a really big part of the pressure on households. But although food inflation reached a 45-year high earlier this year, food producers have not been spared their own financial pressures.

In this series, we go behind the numbers to meet some of the households, schools, farms and high street businesses that have seen their budgets stretched to the limit and had to adapt to survive. We'll find out how the crisis has changed their prospects and how they feel about the future. This is Moneybox, surviving or thriving?

For this second programme, we travelled to South Wales to meet two families whose farms and fortunes have faced significant pressure from the rising cost of doing business. So I got one of our lovely fresh free-range eggs picked this morning, ready to go in the pan for me to enjoy my breakfast. Look at that orange yolk, lovely. It's done now.

Yeah lovely runny yolk, that's how I like it. So my name's Kevin Rickard and this is my wife Sian and we're at Castle Farm which is in Bishton Newport in South Wales. We run approximately 200 acre mixed farm, 32,000 free range hens, and we've diversified into milking, vending machines. We make our own ice cream. We have three farm shops.

So 32,000 chickens. Yeah, so that's how we started diversification. I used to work selling bull semen. That's where my job was. Big market for bull semen? Big market for bull semen around dairy farms. Their farm is close to Newport and although shoppers can visit to buy their produce directly, it's still... very obviously a working farm. Retired sheepdogs snooze in the shade of tractors and other machinery, but the old farmhouse is full of children's toys because this is a family business.

Sian's parents have farmed here since 1970 as tenants and they bought it 23 years ago. Their daughter and son-in-law took over this traditional small farm in 2020 and immediately began to innovate. Sean used to be an accounts manager in a fuel company and we decided we all wanted to come back and work on the farm so we started putting planning in for a 32,000 free-range egg unit.

It took us two years to get the planning for it. Then COVID come and Sian's seen the need for a shop. So we decided to have a crack at it ourselves. So we went to the local fruit and veg market, which is in Cardiff, three o'clock in the morning. Picked up a load of fruit and veg. and started doing home deliveries with it. And it just took off from there, the farm shops. I brought you cheese today. So don't you. Thank you.

So we've got here some ginger spice flavoured cheddars and we've got some soft cheese as well, Pearl Ass and Pearl Wen. So what's the most popular cheese? The Black Bomber which is a nice mature cheddar. It was a very nice mature cheddar. I researched that very carefully. Once Sian had carried the delivery of locally made cheeses in, she showed me round the farm shop. Come on in. Small but packed.

I think is how I would describe this. What am I looking at? We've got some meat here that we produce on the farm. Our free-range chickens, our own reared pork, beef, lamb. We do some bacon, sausages. We also do locally produced cheeses, homemade jams and chutneys. Do our own milk that we produce on the farm.

Wide range of fruit and veg and our own free range eggs. And then we source everything else as locally as possible. I'm going to go and look at your ice cream. I can see the freezer. Oh, it looks amazing. Here we've got vanilla, unicorn, raspberry ripple, blue bubblegum. Are you farming your own unicorns? No, unfortunately not. My little girl would love that. Oh, rum and raisin is what I'm having, I think. Who's buying this stuff?

We have a wide range of local and regular people. Some people do travel as well because they like the thing of coming out to a farm and buying the produce that's produced on the farm. So the milk vending machine is very popular because people can see the cows in the field. They can see the cows being milked if they come at the right time.

And none of this was here, was it, before Covid? How did you expand into this? So during Covid we started with just the basics, your fruit and veg, your milk, your bread and... People will start to approach you when they know you're up and going to put local stuff in. And we've searched the internet a lot for local people, local producers. Facebook, social media is a brilliant way as well. Local markets to get to know other local people producing their own. food.

So is this the only shop you've got? We have another two though, one in the Kingsway Shopping Centre in Newport and one in the Indoor Market in Newport as well. You must be flat out. Yes, we are pretty busy. Are they both doing as well as this one? The one in Newport Kingsway...

centre is. It's very similar to this shop. It's a farm shop deli. It's in a good position near the car park. The one in Newport into market is a butchery and a fish counter. This may be not doing quite as well, maybe not in the right location. that is when we might look to change in the next few months. Are people buying less because of their own cost of living crisis?

Some people, yes. A lot of people that use the shop are maybe older, retired, so the cost of living crisis hasn't affected them as bad. We haven't noticed a huge change during the cost of living crisis. So do people only shop here?

So now we also do a free delivery service and we started that during COVID and we've carried that on. That is quite a cost to our business, but we feel as though it is something that we can provide and make us stand out. That is quite a popular service is the free delivery. When you talk about a cost to your business, is it still making money?

Yes, the business is still making money. We have had to increase margins slightly. Obviously, stuff we buy in has gone up and stuff we produce has gone up to produce. So we have had to increase prices and margins slightly to cover our overheads. And this is your family farm. How many generations? So I'll be the third generation on the farm, and hopefully our children will be able to as well. Do they want to? Archie's definitely keen, our little boy, but he is only seven, so time will tell.

What kind of challenges are you facing as a business? Obviously, to diversify, you've got to invest. So there's been big investment to get to where we are. And like I said, there's lots of costs increasing all the time. Staffing is another challenge. Touch wood, we've got a lot of...

very good loyal staff at the moment, but that can be difficult as well. It has been a tough few years for farms. The war in Ukraine had an immediate impact on their costs, pushing up the price of animal feed and fertiliser to painful highs. But after taking on the farm just before Covid, Sian and Kevin are used to adapting fast. Covid was really good for us. We grasped it and took it forward for us. It was a massive game changer for our farm. How much did the business grow?

doubled, if not trebled, our business. Wow. Since COVID, the next thing that's come along is the cost of living crisis. What kind of price increases have you seen? On the farm with the price increases, the feed costs, the consumables, everything's... doubled so it's crazy. And has what you can charge for your produce doubled? If you compare the produce in the supermarkets compared to what we do in our farm shop

You know, people used to see the farm shops always more expensive than supermarkets, but now there's not much difference in it at all. You do still pay more for things like free range, locally sourced products, whether it's at the farm shop or the supermarket. Are people buying less of that now their own budgets are tightening up? So we find that supermarkets can't get the eggs. So more people are coming to us, so we're delivering more eggs. We've doubled our deliveries on eggs.

People didn't want to restock because they weren't getting paid enough for their eggs. It wasn't working out. The figures weren't stacking up. So now the supermarkets are crying out for eggs. You know, they've approached us and we've been able to say, well. Our eggs go out through the door straight to the consumer. We keep the price reasonable. And yeah, that's what it is. So you had a very good COVID. Are you having a very good cost of living crisis? Probably, yeah. Yeah, we are probably, yeah.

They're not just farming cows, selling eggs both direct to consumers and to a wholesaler, running three farm shops and making their own ice cream, which, by the way, was delicious. Kevin showed me what was clearly one of his favourite innovations. So we're going round to the milk vending machine now. Oh, look at this. Two machines here. Tell me what I need to do first.

So people come in and purchase either a litre or 500ml reusable glass bottle and then go to the milk vending machine and purchase their milk or milkshake. This is all contactless, no cash on site. And it's a really slick machine. That is so slick. That is like a milk machine from the future. It brought the bottle up and it shot it out. So there's your refrigerated glass bottle.

Oh, it's really cold. Yeah, so people come here on a hot day, nice fresh cold milk, can't beat it. Oh, I can get milk, but I can also get, I can get milkshakes. I can get blueberry muffin, honeycomb banana, chocolate, strawberry or vanilla. Which milkshake should I get? I think vanilla is the best flavour because it tastes like ice cream in a bottle. Oh, what does my producer want? I think we should get vanilla.

Okay, vanilla it is. So I select vanilla. Press to fill. Put in the milkshake syrup in first and then they'll put the milk in on top. If I was your neighbor, I would be drinking so much milkshake. So that's all done. If you remove the bottle. And it says, enjoy within three days. I'm going to enjoy within three minutes. And the door closes and it cleans between every one.

If you hadn't diversified in the way that you have, what do you think your business would look like at the moment? We'd have probably had to sell a phone. To excuse the perm, we hadn't put all our legs in one basket. So before... COVID and Brexit, we were probably making little or no profit on the farm and now the farm is thriving.

Sian and Kevin may be thriving, but there had clearly been challenges. And I wondered how farming was faring across the country. So Manette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union, representing 47,000 farming businesses across England and Wales, and farming myself in South Wiltshire, near Salisbury. I'm a tenant farmer on 300 acres. We have a beef suckler cow, a herd, a few sheep, and we have weddings on the farm as well. I asked Minette how common it was to diversify like this.

It's variable. There are a lot of farmers that are diversified, but equally there are many that aren't and aren't in the right location effectively to diversify. It's not certainly an option that is open to everyone. It is for some, but not for others. So it just depends about where you are, whether that is your skill set, whether you really want to be or have the skill set to be engaging with.

public all the time a lot of people are really focused on farming and that's their skill set and they don't want to be having what would be ultimately a very different job as well so it's about doing what works for you and about what works for your business Kevin and Charlotte have been driven to diversify because of the struggles that they've had. Is it harder to make a living as a farmer now? I think it continually gets harder effectively. I mean, as the price of food.

For many people, they will be sort of reeling that the prices have been rising, but the returns back to the farm gate have actually been getting less and less. So the amount that the farmer takes out of that value chain. over time has been getting less so in many cases it's well under 10 percent of course their costs are going up and so they're finding it in many ways harder to make a living so that's been a continuing theme if you like for many years

As businesses farms have to plan ahead. They spend money now for crops or for produce that they don't get to harvest and sell until later. What does that mean in a time of rising prices? Well, you know, that remains one of the significant challenges when you have an event like the war in Ukraine that literally saw that cost inflation on farms skyrocket.

So much of what we do on our farms is linked to the wholesale price of gas. Now, that peaked 600% higher last year than it was back in 2019. So how we manage our risk and volatility. is a key part of running a business now and it's challenging because nobody predicted we were going to end up in this place but it just shows effectively with the challenges of weather events climate change

cost inflation. We have to have businesses that are resilient and keep investing in that resilience to make sure that those businesses are there for the future.

We're in the milking parlour. You can see the cows gathered in the back of what we call the collecting yard waiting to be milked. There's a hundred in this group and you can see that we've got 20 cows in the parlour at the minute, all of them giving milk down that they've made this morning.

So all of the cows here are descended from both sets of grandparents. They come from my father's father and also from my mother's parents. And it just gives me an immense amount of pride to think that we're keeping these genetics going. Gives me this huge sense of belonging and a sense of place. How long does it take each cow to get milked? So it takes seven minutes for a cow to milk out. And is Steve down there going to milk all 100 cows?

Yes, that's Steve's job now for this afternoon. It'll take him about three hours Why is that one moving she's saying come on Steve gonna move on I don't want to wait. They know once they've finished milking, they can go into a cool shed for an hour or so and have some extra food. And that's making them happy. I'm Abi Reeder and I'm a farmer from Wembo. We are just outside Cardiff in South Wales.

And I'm farming in partnership with my father and my uncle, running about 700 acres here. And we're what we call a mixed farm. So we do dairy, sheep, arable and a little bit of beef. Is that a normal farm? It feels like quite an old fashioned farm to have. everything instead of specialising. Typically years ago you would have had mixed farms. A lot of farms now have tended towards specialisation.

It does help if you've got a little bit of diversity in the farm, because if one industry is not doing so well, you've got another one to turn to. There's a saying that we've got, which is up horn, down corn. So if livestock are doing well, your corn may not be and vice versa.

So Steve, I expect the cows are glad to come in out of the heat, are they? Yes, definitely. 27 degrees out there at the moment. Too hot. How many have you milked already? Ten. So you've got a little way to go yet then. I was saying you'd be here about three hours. Probably, yeah, a bit longer today because it's so hot. It's just too hot in here. I meet Abby at her family farm, which she works alongside her parents and Uncle Robert.

It's one of the hottest days of the year. So we slip into the cool of her uncle's old stone farmhouse for a chat. And I ask her, what's been the biggest challenge? Without a doubt, bovine TB. That has been a real struggle. On top of that, we have seen some turbulence in our milk price. From that, we've got what's called a cost of production milk contract. So in theory, that should take out a lot of the peaks and troughs. One of the milk processors that we sell to went bust.

throwing us a lot of money. That was quite a hit to take on the business. Beast of the East was terrible. That caused a lot of stress. The weather can be a real pain in the neck.

What about inflation? What about your rising costs? Where are you seeing that? So the rising costs have been an absolute nightmare. Agricultural inflation was floating around, well, between 28% and 36% at one stage. 36%? Yep.

So way higher than we're seeing on supermarket shelves? Way higher. I know things like fertiliser in stock. What are you going to do later in winter when you haven't got enough forage? But at the same time, if there's no money in the bank, what do you do then? Everybody lost confidence.

Did you have to put up your prices? So you've hit the nail on the head. We are commercial farmers. We do not control the price that we sell our food at. We take the price that we're given and that's it. For example, sell our beef. it goes to market or go direct to a slaughterhouse but we don't know until we get the check back how much we'll get. When we sell our milk we'll know a couple of months in advance maybe what that milk is worth but that's it.

And that is not a negotiated price. That is a price that's given to you. There's no option for commercial farmers to be able to say, actually, I really do need a little bit more money because I'm struggling to pay my bills. It's not how that works. What kind of costs? rows for you. So we've got what we call the big three, the three F's in agriculture, which is feed, fertiliser and fuel. That went up by, gosh, doubled, then it trebled.

Being a dairy farm, we rely on electricity. We can't just cut back on it because cows have to be milked. If you look at the feed price, the feed price went up by just over 50%. Again, you can't just say, well, I'm not going to feed the cows today. That's not how it works. And then the fertilizer price. I mean, that went up from a typical price per ton of 230, 240 pounds a ton that hiked all the way up to almost a thousand pound a ton.

And that one was a big one for a lot of farmers because they were looking at that thinking, can I really afford to pay that bill this year? And some people might think that fertilizer, it's the big bad wolf. but it feeds four billion people on this planet and if we don't put it out there are going to be consequences and if we don't buy the fodder that we need to feed our livestock or we don't buy the fertilizer to grow our arable crops or our horticulture

where do we end up? And with people who are already feeling that rising cost of living, the last thing they need now is for farmers to cut back on the amount of food they're producing. Because if we create a shortage... we're going to make it even worse for them. What kind of overall increase did you see? Oh gosh, they went up. Cost would have trebled as an average across the board. How are you coping at the moment? I don't think it's really going to go back to where it was, but...

It's just about adapting your business. So what kind of adapting are you doing? Try to save where you can. And that does include looking at... new technology you can incorporate into the farm that can help save money. So for example, maybe a bit alien to listeners, but we started doing genomic testing. So genomics means looking in great detail at the genetic makeup of all of the cows and the herd.

And in doing that, you can foresee which animals are most likely to be the most productive for you and most healthy. So you could pick out the very best cows, breed from them. Then we started breeding just to a beef animal. and selling into the beef market. So little subtle things that can try and help you get a secure income. So would you say instead of diversifying, you're just trying to do the farming that you do do more productively and better? Yeah.

Absolutely. So whether that's contractors or people who are selling us goods for the business, I think it was important to be very aware of the pressure it was putting on our staff. You know, they're feeling the rising cost of living. So making sure that they were getting a suitable pay. to make them survive because you're nothing without your people. Have you thought about offering the kind of farm experiences that...

So many parents want to bring their kids to. They pick your pumpkins, pick your strawberries, pet the sheep. They are fantastic ideas and we do a number of open days here and we host a lot of school visits. But that is a very different type of farming. And again, a lot of farmers, probably including myself, are livestock and crop people, not necessarily people people. I'm not necessarily sure it's something that I would want as a day job. Do you think that means you're on a less...

stable footing than say a farm that's diversified into glamping on some of its fields? Do you feel like all your eggs are in one basket? I don't, no. I certainly chose to do the things that we were good at rather than to diversify out of that. I think certainly for me at the moment, I enjoy doing the farming that I do and getting better at that and being slicker at it is probably something I take more interest in. Are you surviving?

or thriving as a farm business? I would say at the moment we're surviving. Farming is a very long-term game. Are you making investments in that? Yeah, we've got a trial on the farm at the minute, an agroforestry trial. That is looking at both the... value of increasing biodiversity and carbon sequestration but also the opportunity to offset having to buy in products such as soya which can have a high carbon price tag to them.

And there's also an opportunity then from the produce in that agroforestry project, it could go into industries such as cement and plaster because it's very low carbon and we've got interest from housing associations who are keen to see whether... you know, we can really grow that side of the business. And if that works, this trial is designed to be able to be implemented on any farm. And you genuinely find this more straightforward than a milkshake machine. It's exciting.

Like Sian and Kevin, Abbey's is a family farming business. But that can sometimes mean pretty strong conversations about what they might need to save money in the future. Her uncle Robert joined us with the offer of a ginger beer and listened with some bemusement as Abby talked about one possible investment. So an interesting example is we recently had a quote for an automatic slurry scraper.

So it's a bit like people have robotic hoovers that go around the house. You can get the same thing for a cow shed, but instead of going around picking up dust, this is going to pick up cow poo. And you just think, oh, that is absolutely fantastic. But on a serious note, it would cut.

an hour and a half maybe two hours of staff time a day during the winter by picking up that slurry it would probably save on fuel but obviously it would take a little bit in electricity because it needs to charge itself

So is it one of those things that you think, yeah, I won't have to do that anymore because this little robot thing is going to do it for me? Or is it really going to bring a value to the business? Are you on board with the automatic slurry scraper? Not really, no. Sometimes the more sophisticated things that you get are far more likely to be the things that break down on a Friday evening and you can't get a fitter in until Monday.

So you have to have some backup there. So it's not as though you can do away with cost A by investing in cost B. Often when you invest in cost B, you have to hold cost A back there in reserve just to carry you through the night times and the weekends when other people aren't prepared to work. Can I just say? how much our listeners are going to be able to resonate with the automatic slurry scraper. Slurry aside, Abby's focus is on innovating to make her farming more efficient.

It's another way for farms to survive and thrive during tough times rather than changing their business. I asked Minette Batters, president of the NFU, if Abby's right to focus on that rather than on adding alternative ways to make money. She's absolutely right. So there are two things going on here, effectively.

The market, the end consumer, is really wanting to know that the animal welfare is really being taken account of in the business. They're also wanting to know effectively the carbon footprint of what they...

are buying. I think what we do see is a sort of landscape where we need everybody. We need different people doing different things. Ultimately, we've got to look at all of these things to make sure that actually this is viable going forward and the likes of Abby are going to... continue investing in their businesses and having a great business, a business that is above all else profitable for them.

And my greatest fear would be that, you know, we become farm shop Britain. We just focus on producing food for a small proportion of society that can afford it. We've got to have great British food for everyone. So what Kevin and Sian are doing is very different to what Abby's doing. Do you think that in the future we'll end up with two different kinds of farms, you know, those sort of local experiential farms and then the bigger food producers?

what is really clear to me is that we need both you know Abbey is producing high quality milk that will be accessible to everybody out there now we lose that at our peril but also that we can look where it's suitable for the business add value and produce things that are more niche. So Abby's focusing on the farming. She's investing in doing that better rather than milkshake machines or farm visits. Is she right?

She's having to focus on several things here, you know, long-term plan to impact less on the environment, get to eventually a carbon neutral position of production. But she's also facing into these huge costs. So the more she can focus on... focus on her efficiencies.

good for her business good for her bottom line but also good for for climate change and impacting less on the environment around you so this is a sort of key plank if you like of the road that farmers are on for the future so it's essential that we have effectively both of these businesses we've got to have affordable food for everybody whatever budget they're on

Different challenges and different responses at these two family farms, but both businesses are looking forward to how they can continue to survive and thrive in the future. And with multiple generations living and working the same land, it's clear they're used to taking a very long view. I've got a few ideas for the future. You have to change it up. We've got our futures ahead of us. We've got our kids' futures ahead of us.

We wanted to build something for them. Mem and Dad also work on the farm alongside us and we've been able to keep the family farm running due to the diversification and I think they are very proud of that. Without a doubt, despite all of these issues, the future of the farm is always going to be positive. I get a huge amount of self-worth out of being part of the business. I enjoy the heritage that's behind it. I enjoy being with the livestock.

We've got a huge amount of young people coming into the industry at the minute. They're seeing a future. I saw a footprint. I'm Andrew Benfield, and I'm obsessed with the Yeti. The face looks like some kind of monkey. The idea of a yeti-like creature has been around for centuries, but could it be real? In Yeti, a new 10-part series from BBC Radio 4, I'm going to try to find out. I'll be joined...

by a good friend. You said we were going for a short walk across the valley. I'm Richard Horsey. This search isn't going to be easy. They have the ability to disappear. Are we chasing phantoms? Yeti chases. You'll never find them. But in this series, we think we might. Listen to Yeti on BBC Sounds. A Vivint home is a smarter home. Vivint lets you keep an eye on your kids from anywhere, so it's a smarter way to care.

Because Vivint adjusts your thermostat when it knows you're out, it's a smarter way to save. When Vivint guards your packages from Prowlers, it's a smarter way to protect. And when you can lock the doors and dim the lights for movie night with a single tap, Well, that's a smarter way to live. To get the smarter home system that just gets you, go to Vivint.com or call 1-855-4-VIVINT. Live intelligently.