Belties, Dyson Farming and Sunflowers

Over the last week, I continued my Nuffield tour of the UK in England, with my travels taking me through the beautiful Yorkshire Dales National Park, east to Lincolnshire and down the coast to Norfolk, ending in Cambridge.

First stop was a visit with Neil Heseltine and his lovely herd of 180 Belted Galloways, grazing on the hillside of Malham Cove. In the early 2000’s he introduced Beltie’s and decreased sheep numbers, seeing a huge improvement in the diversity of flower species on the farm. Neil has become an advocate of nature-based livestock systems on social media, TV and radio, calling for a better balance between farming, nature and climate and urging farmers to question if current food production systems make money, as well as deliver social and environmental benefits.

Five minutes along the road, I visited the famous Town End Farm Shop, run by 5th generation shop keeper and butcher Chris Wildman, a passionate advocate of local provenance and storytelling, taking every opportunity to engage visitors with local food stories - myself included!

I visited Sam Ward of Uncle Henry's Farm Shop, Butchery and Café in Lincolnshire where the Ward's run a mixed arable and pigs business. It was fascinating to hear how they have moved away from fixed farrowing crates to temporary ones, for only the first five days of a piglets’ life, to fattening the pigs on straw and low stocking densities of 1 pig to 1.4m. Exciting plans ahead looking at breeding insects for animal feed, to reduce reliance on soya.

During a visit to Dyson Farming I met with operations director James Thompson who explained the journey of the largest privately owned farming business in the UK spanning 15,000ha of actively farmed land. I toured their impressive 7ha glasshouse facilities, hearing about their ambition to extend to 14ha, with wheels currently in motion. Exciting plans to produce the first British grown strawberries to be on our shelves at Christmas. Lots of discussions around how they are building their food brand through good story telling and personal product packaging.

I enjoyed the very generous hospitality of Matthew Naylor who gave us a tour of Naylor Flowers Ltd – a cut flower operation spanning 700ac and producing a range of flowers including; sunflowers, alliums, delphiniums, daffodils, cornflowers, plus many more. UK growers supply only 20% of the UK market with high imports from Africa, particularly driven by demand for out of season flowers, e.g. roses for Valentine’s Day, which is leading to increasingly unsustainable consumer habits.

My last Lincolnshire trip was a visit to A.H. Worth with Simon Day for a tour of their potato packing facility, seeing some pea harvesting and hearing their plans for growing hemp as a new protein for the UK market. Retail quality potatoes are the backbone of the business but increasing investment in fresh prepared facilities to meet rising demand from time poor consumers.

England tour to be continued…