It is a great honour for me to speak to the conference today, I first attended the Cattle Breeders Conference in Cambridge in 1992, and I remember vividly there were 8 people in the beef section! To see close to 300 today is great. I have been asked by your chairman Dr Phil Hadley to finish today with my story of how we started farming in 2006, with no more than a wheelbarrow and an overdraft (which we still have both), to where we are today having close to 250 head and winning Beef Farmer of the year last year. I am living proof that you can start from scratch and build a profitable rural business but you are going to need to follow some simple steps on the way, surround yourself with good people, use every bit of science you can and find out what your customer wants and make it.
As young farmers in the UK we have a huge opportunity as in our working lives the global population will increase by another 2 billion people. This is a huge opportunity but also a challenge as the pressure on land and water resources will only increase, this means cows in our case must become more efficient in creating protein from as few inputs as possible. As a UK farmer we must stick to what we are good at, I can't compete in a commodity beef market with a guy in Brazil with 50,000 head of cattle, low labour costs and better climate. However, I can produce a grass fed Angus sirloin steak for a customer to enjoy on a Friday night, and more importantly it can and will be the same next Friday!
My background is a bit different, I grew up on a dairy farm on the Devon/Somerset border where my Dad and Uncle were herdsmen, I didn't like school much so left at 16 with almost no qualifications and spent some time in a Heavy Metal band, this was great fun but unfortunately we weren't very good. I then got a job in a butchers shop but the cow bug in me was too strong so after a year I started working on a 300 cow dairy farm near Shaftesbury that was a flying herd running Lim bulls. From there I worked on various other dairy and beef farms before going to Lackham College to study Agriculture. After college I worked for a couple of semen import/export companies and spent a lot of time in mainland Europe buying cows to bring back to the UK for customers. In 1997 I got asked to go and work for Supersires in Dartington and in 2000 I got headhunted to work for Genus ABS, I had a great 10 years at Genus and was lucky to get Director level in the UK Business.
In late 2005 having collected a wife and two kids we, as a family applied for the Tenancy of a 103 acre Gloucester County Council Farm and were lucky enough to get it and took it over in March 2006. The farm in those days was 103 acres of docks, thistles and chick weed! No gates and a house that needed some love. We also inherited a Ford Capri on the lawn on bricks, rubbish everywhere and a good selection of ‘guests’ in the house. However all the farm needed was a bit of love and today it is one of the best farms around which we are proud to show to around 25 farm walks a year.
We very quickly realised we needed to get off-farm income so have started several successful businesses alongside including ‘Sterling Sires’ which is an AI business that retails semen in the UK, ‘British Angus.com’ which is a business that markets Angus Genetics all over the world and ‘Your Perfect Night In’ which is an online steak and wine gift business. Today the Melview Group employs just shy of 40 people all based at a little council farm in Dymock.
The keys to our success are quite simple.
Attitude
Don't walk away from negative people… run! We have a team of people around us including a brilliant landlord, a great bank manager, one of the best agronomists and nutritionists in the UK, a forward thinking accountant and an awesome farm consultant. All of these people are positive and full of great advice. I speak to them all the time.
Learn from the best
I have been lucky to spend some time with some of the best farmers in the world, I urge any young farmer to identify the area they need to work in and go and speak to the best farmers in the world you can. Today at the conference Tom Gubbins gave a great paper; in my view, Tom is the smartest beef farmer I have ever met so anyone that wants to do beef in the future make sure you grab Tom and buy him a drink!
Find out what your customer needs and why
This is the key to any successful start-up business and particularly in agriculture, you cannot afford to start in a commodity-price driven market so find something that is added value and go there.
Grow your own Protein
If you are a livestock producer you must get your cost of production down as low as you can, we grow lucerne and red clover, as the most expensive things you have to buy are protein to feed cows and fertiliser to feed grass. Homegrown protein can cut your cost of production in half and there are protein crops that will grow anywhere, ignore your neighbours and get on with it!
You are feeding a rumen
In livestock particularly beef, you are not a beef farmer you feed a rumen. If your cows have a full rumen that has the correct balance of carbs, protein and fibre in it anything is possible! If your cows aren't happy, full and content they won’t be fully efficient and be able to maximise their genetic gain and you will lose money.
Use every bit of Science you can
There are piles and piles of great science you can use, most of it is free and can help you be the best you can be in every aspect in your business, we use everything from genomics in bull selection to cling film on our silage pit. It’s mostly simple stuff and can have a huge impact.
It’s your job to do the marketing
Make sure you market what you do, we use social media and the web as simple and cheap ways of communicating with our customers. We go to selected shows to engage with new customers and show them what we have and we host as many people at the farm as we can.
In conclusion I firmly believe my generation of beef farmers have the best opportunity in 50 years to build profitable, sustainable businesses for themselves and their families, however you must use every bit of science, market-understanding and good advice you can get.
I would like to thank BCBC again for the invitation to speak today and would welcome anyone to come and visit the farm at any time to chat about my paper in more detail.