Post subsidy farming?

[Kernowkid]

Right my 1st post here we go.
I work with my old man on our 370 acre farm in Cornwall.
We have a flock of 800 Feb/March indoor lambing ewes. Try and sell the bulk of lamb by the summer with the help of home mix creep and rotational grazing, and the rest before Christmas.
Also finish about 80-100 stores cattle each year. Got room to house about a 120 cattle through winter.
Grow 100 acres of mainly spring barley and some oats. 50% for us to feed to cattle and double and treble bearing ewes pre/post lambing plus home mix creep.
Use about 75% of our straw and sell the rest.
Drill/spray/harvest our selves and just get someone in to bale.

The farms in one block, all but about 80 acres is ploughable. Farm has its own water for the most part. Fenced fairly well but needs plenty more doing to maximise the sheep grazing. Good buildings all round.
No staff other than me and the old man apart from a chap one day a week and a guy that helps at lambing.

Be interested to hear people’s thoughts on what road they would go down with a similar property going forward post subsidy. Spread the risks like we do now and be busy idiots a lot of the time or focus more on one set up?

Cheers!

 

[PuG]

Sounds a lovely setup. More the question is, what debt if any does the farm carry? can you currently survive without PAC money? whats most profitable for yourselves. Not forgetting over 90% of Welsh lamb is currently exported to the EU so something has to give, I can imagine the prices will go like milk. Are you in a nice spot of Cornwall, tourism? holiday lets? invest the last CAP payments in it to diversifying perhaps. I just sold some 8 - 9 month old bull calfs for 700 euro's each, and the buyer can't get enough for going to Spain, he said the market is strong and completely unaffected.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Theoretically you should be able to bring in £45k+ of rental income from a farm like that plus any future environmental income plus renting your sheds out before getting out of bed. Ie £60-70k.

I dont farm like that either but its an interesting concept to consider things against

 

[GeorgeK]

Theoretically you should be able to bring in £45k+ of rental income from a farm like that plus any future environmental income plus renting your sheds out before getting out of bed. Ie £60-70k.

I agree, best returns look like letting out the bare land and using sheds for industrial/storage, especially if you include income from spending your hours working elsewhere.
Exactly what future rent will be is hard to say. Around me arable is £170/a, so minus BPS leaves £80, but that is still too high to make sustainable returns at the moment especially allowing for years like this. Then you also have to make up for loss of BPS on the home farm. So rents could fall a fair bit in years to come.
Industrial units depend on access, location, and may take some investment to convert.
As for ELMS, I would budget for it being a total disaster!

 

[chipchap]

Get into added value and premium markets as much as you can. That is where the profit is and will be in the future.

 

[Northern territory]

Get into added value and premium markets as much as you can. That is where the profit is and will be in the future.

But who is honestly making a fortune out of selling their own meat. Accounting for wastage and rules and regs. I know a chap who has a reasonably sized free range chicken business who rears, slaughters and sells to farm shops and some higher end retailers. Has been doing it 20 years and wouldn’t say he was rolling in it. Got out of turkeys at Christmas last year as he had a bad batch of kelly bronze and a lot didn’t make weights.

 

[Hilly]

But who is honestly making a fortune out of selling their own meat. Accounting for wastage and rules and regs. I know a chap who has a reasonably sized free range chicken business who rears, slaughters and sells to farm shops and some higher end retailers. Has been doing it 20 years and wouldn’t say he was rolling in it. Got out of turkeys at Christmas last year as he had a bad batch of kelly bronze and a lot didn’t make weights.

A lot have given up , you can’t be a farmer and a butcher.

 

[Johnnyboxer]

Get into added value and premium markets as much as you can. That is where the profit is and will be in the future.

Yep
Most that have done it are doing a lot better than their neighbours

 

[Johnnyboxer]

A lot have given up , you can’t be a farmer and a butcher.

But your son can be a butcher and you be the farmer [emoji6]

 

[chipchap]

But who is honestly making a fortune out of selling their own meat. Accounting for wastage and rules and regs. I know a chap who has a reasonably sized free range chicken business who rears, slaughters and sells to farm shops and some higher end retailers. Has been doing it 20 years and wouldn’t say he was rolling in it. Got out of turkeys at Christmas last year as he had a bad batch of kelly bronze and a lot didn’t make weights.

You need to think outside the box a bit more?

 

[Hilly]

But your son can be a butcher and you be the farmer [emoji6]

Very true !

 

[egbert]

Right my 1st post here we go.
I work with my old man on our 370 acre farm in Cornwall.
We have a flock of 800 Feb/March indoor lambing ewes. Try and sell the bulk of lamb by the summer with the help of home mix creep and rotational grazing, and the rest before Christmas.
Also finish about 80-100 stores cattle each year. Got room to house about a 120 cattle through winter.
Grow 100 acres of mainly spring barley and some oats. 50% for us to feed to cattle and double and treble bearing ewes pre/post lambing plus home mix creep.
Use about 75% of our straw and sell the rest.
Drill/spray/harvest our selves and just get someone in to bale.

The farms in one block, all but about 80 acres is ploughable. Farm has its own water for the most part. Fenced fairly well but needs plenty more doing to maximise the sheep grazing. Good buildings all round.
No staff other than me and the old man apart from a chap one day a week and a guy that helps at lambing.

Be interested to hear people’s thoughts on what road they would go down with a similar property going forward post subsidy. Spread the risks like we do now and be busy idiots a lot of the time or focus more on one set up?

Cheers!

Sounds a lovely set up, and in a sensible world, you'd be looking very well set.

Interesting that you consider you're spreading your risks.
I'd say you're way too exposed to a hit on red meat. (and this isn't a criticism...so am I, so is everyone else on the west side of the country.)

I have long been trying to spread my bets away from livestock farming (to which I remain committed, but strictly on a 'this is a big hobby' basis).
As already said above, I would consider whether you have - if you're owner occupier- buildings that could be better rented out doing something else - factor in rates/non-payers, and all of those jollies.
Can you store a few caravans? Is that a thing down with you?
Rent a loosebox or two to someone with neddies? (keep it very small unless you want em taking over your life)
AirB&B in anything up from a tent? (using the 'real farm experience' )

turbine or two? - they're popular down west

Do either of you have any particular skills which would earn more doing a day or two away from the farm?
(and I'm meaning not related to farming, as that would leave you just as exposed, only vicariously)
If so, should you de-intensify, and earn more doing that with some of your time?

It could be (glory be) that grassland and hedges are an earner under ELMS, and allowing a longer flailing rotation and some trad maintenance could be an extra brownie points thing. Be watching that - it might suit you.

Retailing your meat is an earner, although it's harder the further you are from streetlights, and nearer to hundreds of others thinking they'd do the same.
(I've long experience if you want help..pm me)

Good luck

 

[AndrewM]

If you take your subsidy cheque away from your profit, do you still make enough to live on?

 

[kfpben]

As you’re in Cornwall I would think caravan storage would be a good bet. I expect many folk would pay good money to drive down the M5 regularly without their caravan bouncing around on the back.

 

[Northern territory]

Mad world though isn’t it when you can’t make a living out of what you are good at.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Have you costed the sheep side?
Feb/ early March lambing and creep feeding always strikes me as high cost to meet a falling market.
Have you looked at either lambing earlier to catch higher prices (personally I think with a bad trade deal the seasonal price difference will grow) or lambing later to cut costs?

 

[Northern territory]

You need to think outside the box a bit more?

Do plenty of that but running another business alongside the farm leaves very little time. Selling meat just seems like A lot of chasing around to me. Something that takes up very little time is what I want

 

[Kernowkid]

Renting is easy money but not the route for us.
The stores are fag paper

 

[Kernowkid]

Cheers all for the ideas.
Time will tell what we do. Took some old ewes with no milk to market today and made £130 a head! Should of took the the lot!
Hopefully it’s a good sign for the lamb price this season tho.
Nothing cheap coming from NZ anymore.

I think upping the sheep by x2 or even more and getting rid of the store cattle and cutting back the arable would be most profitable if you keep the production cost per lamb as low as possible and go back to farming with a stick and a dog and not employing or going mad with the fertiliser you can’t go far wrong. Barring a bad trade deal with the eu that is.
Lots of hard work tho and stress trying to stop the things keeling over though.
Already diversified a fair bit and that does well but don’t want to be propping up the farm from other streams, farm needs to be profitable in its own right.
If supermarkets paid a fair price post the subsidies being pulled life would be much easier but somehow I can’t see that happening!