Category: Blog

Grown for good: our organic crops

Posted on May 30, 2025 by - Blog, Farming and Dairy

Our business is rooted in a 1,500-acre organic arable and dairy farm nestled between the Chichester Plains and the South Downs. This rich, fertile space allows us to grow a range of organic crops including maize, oats, wheat and barley, which are generally sown in the spring and harvested from August onwards.

We farm organic crops for two key reasons:

  • Self-sufficiency – growing our own helps us protect our dairy enterprise against a very volatile organic market. It means we can feed our cows all year round, rather than having to purchase food externally. Around three-quarters of the crops we grow are used to sustain our herd.
  • To sell – growing crops makes full use of the good quality soil that we are fortunate to be farming. This enables us to sell our crops into premium quality and export markets.

Changing times – organic crop rotation

Since converting to organic farming in the late 1990’s we now follow a diverse crop rotation programme. This helps sustain fertility in the soil and promote good soil health. The 7-year rotation requires crops such as clover to be planted, which fixes nitrogen in the soil naturally helping support future crop growth. With a grass-fed dairy herd, we also need a grass grazing platform that forms part of the farm’s rotation. This is located close to the dairy and linked to the permanent tracks used by the herd as the cows walk to and from the milking parlour.

What are the crops used for?

We typically sell the oats, barley and wheat which are grown here:

  • Oats are sold for organic porridge oats and organic oat milk in Cheshire
  • Barley is sold for malting to make organic beer in Belgium or Sweden
  • Wheat is usually sold for milling to make organic bread or biscuits by Doves Organic in Hungerford

We also sell our barley and wheat for seed production. Once cleaned it’s sold via our grain merchant to other farmers for crop growing on their own farms.

Which crops are used to feed the cows?

The crops we grow for our dairy herd are used in different ways:

  • Maize can be cut as a whole plant and chopped to make silage. This is then fed to the cows over the winter when they are inside the sheds. Some of the maize is left to grow and mature before being cut for its grain only, rolled and ensiled as a high energy feed for the cows.
  • Clover is usually around three times a year using a mower. It’s left to wilt and dry out before being picked up, chopped to a uniform length and ensiled in large storage bunkers. It’s then used as winter feed.
  • Barley is used in two different ways; when’s it’s not fully mature it can be cut to produce a whole crop silage for the cow’s diet. Or if it’s matured further (but not fully ripe) it can be harvested, and the grain crushed for winter feed. 

Why does organic matter when it comes to crops?

The organic standard is legally binding in Europe and the UK. Farming to this standard – without chemicals and synthetic fertilisers and following higher animal welfare standards – enables us to sell to a premium market. It also improves the biodiversity, soil health and climate resilience of the farm, helping us meet our own sustainability goals as a business.

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to growing crops?

In recent years the weather and climate change have been the biggest challenges. Extreme weather patterns through the growing season means we have to adapt. Global instability and Covid have also affected grain markets, impacting prices in the UK and Europe. The organic grain market currently makes up less than 10% of the UK total grain sales, but sales of organic grain products are growing between 7% and 10% annually. We’re also seeing growing consumer demand driven by younger customers who are keen to seek out provenance and choose organic, less processed foods.

A Day in the Life –Tim Eames, Tangmere Recycling Site Manager

Posted on May 8, 2025 by - Blog, Soils and Composting, Waste Management, Woodhorn Group

Tim Eames manages our green waste recycling site at Tangmere in West Sussex. As part of our meet the team series, Tim explains what his role entails and shares how a typical day on site looks.

I’m usually up by 6am, fuelled by a strong coffee and a quick breakfast. While I’m waking up, I check over the day’s plan and pick up any early messages – if someone’s off or something’s changed, I’ll tweak the schedule before heading out.

By 7:20am I’m on site, giving myself a bit of time before the team arrives. Our daily briefing kicks off at 7:30am. It’s our chance to sort the plan for the day – who’s doing what, any safety points, visits from contractors, that sort of thing. We’ll go over everything from green waste processing and compost screening to batch turning, production and any machinery faults.

By 8am we’re in full swing. I make sure all the kit – loaders, shredders, and screeners – are running properly, then do a walkaround to spot any issues that might’ve cropped up overnight. I’ll check fences, lagoon levels, and generally make sure the place is good to go.

Mid-morning, I take a closer look at the site operations to make sure we’re sticking to the rules and the Site operating safely. It’s also a chance to see what needs tidying up and prompt the team with any operational support in each area, we do get regular visitors, so keeping the place looking sharp matters.

Lunchtime is usually quick – just a bite while I catch up on admin. I’ll input daily numbers, look at weighbridge logs, and keep the health and safety records up to date. I also spend some time offering support on how the team’s doing and jot down notes for any training or development chats we’ve got coming up.

Early afternoon, I dive into the more behind-the-scenes stuff – ordering parts and supplies, tracking down anything we need to keep the place ticking along. That means everything from workshop tools and PPE to getting quotes from suppliers and checking we’re getting a fair deal.

Later in the afternoon, it’s often time for meetings, either with customers, contractors, or just internal catchups. We talk about how to improve the site layout, make things easier for vehicle access, deal with any drainage or safety issues, and plan ahead for upcoming operational needs.

By 4:30pm, we’re wrapping up. I check that all machinery’s shut down and site is being prepared for being locked with one last walk around. By 5pm, we’re all closed and ready for tomorrow. It’s a good feeling to know the site’s clean, the team’s done a solid job, and we’ve stayed on top of everything.

Then it’s time to clock out, take a breather, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow in the world of waste and compost.

Playing our part in the local community

Posted on March 26, 2025 by - Blog

Contributing to the community in which we belong is important to us – as individuals and as a business. At the heart of our operations is the land on which we’re located; Woodhorn Farm has been managed by the Pitts family since 1882. As a result taking an interest and supporting the local community in which we’re based means a lot to us.

As well as our work to champion gardens and green spaces with schools, charities and community initiatives as part of our Earth Cycle brand, we also work in and around our local area with regular support for handful of organisations.

Oving Youth Club
Our local youth club meets weekly and offers sports, events and activities to young people between the ages of 9 and 16, who live in and around Oving. Residential activities are offered including overnight stays at Lodge Hill too. We provide sponsorship to the Club, to enable to team who run it to offer a wide variety of subsidised events, and regularly welcome them all to the farm for visits to meet the team and our cows.

The Aldingbourne Trust
For many years we’ve actively supported The Aldingbourne Trust, a charity that provides care, support and employment opportunities to people with learning disabilities and autism in West Sussex. As well as funding the creation of a hedge maze at the Aldingbourne Country Centre, we actively support their thriving wood recycling enterprise and have provided bark chip and composts for their children’s play areas. Our owner John Pitts is also a Trustee, providing guidance and due diligence to ensure the Trust delivers on its purpose.

The Oving Cow Shed
Our newest venture, through our Woodhorn Farm brand, has seen us set up The Oving Cow Shed – a milk vending machine at the Oving Jubilee Hall, so that our local community can buy the farm’s organic milk, along with produce from other local suppliers. Our arrangement with the Hall also means that we donate some of the profits from the Shed to support other community events.

Local Schools
For our local village school, The March CE Primary, we’ve been delighted to help transform their garden with both materials and design help. In Chichester we’ve supplied some of the materials for the garden at St Joseph’s Nursery too. And on the coast in Selsey we regularly support the team at Youth Dream with their gardening and environmental therapy project, The Hidden Garden.

St Richards Hospital
At our local NHS hospital a garden has been created, linked to the Donald Wilson Neurological Rehabilitation Centre, which is a specialist centre helping support adults with brain injuries to live independently. As well as supplying topsoil, compost and bark, our team got stuck in to help bring the garden to life too.

We’re very proud of all that goes on in our local community and look forward to continuing to support these amazing organisations during the months and years ahead.

Supporting local businesses

Posted on November 26, 2024 by - Blog

The Woodhorn Business Centre, set in the superb West Sussex countryside, supports a diverse range of businesses. We’re home to more than a dozen companies ranging from management trainers and camper van hire to fabricators and architects.

When our owner John Pitts took over Woodhorn Farm more than 25 years ago, he was keen to explore ways in which to diversify the business. With a set of farm buildings no longer required for agricultural use, the decision was made to convert them, and the business centre was born! We now have over 27,000 square feet of mixed commercial use space, including self-storage units, offices, warehousing and light industrial workshops.

Today we are very proud to be supporting a fantastic group of local companies including:

With easy access to the A27, both Chichester and Bognor Regis nearby and free parking, our commercial spaces offer a stunning rural location with views of the South Downs, plenty of beautiful outside space and our herd of Organic dairy cows often found in nearby fields.

Both of our West Sussex sites in Oving, the Woodhorn Business centre and Ham Farm, are highly sought after but to discuss future availability, please contact Kayleigh Akehurst.

Down On the Farm – November 2024

Posted on November 25, 2024 by - Blog

Reflecting on what’s happening down on the farm, John Pitts, our owner and fourth generation farmer at Woodhorn, shares some thoughts about the farm’s relationship with Organic Herd.

Organic Herd is a farmer owned co-operative of around 100 Organic dairy farmers across the UK and we at Woodhorn have been proud members for the past 25 years. Organic Herd supplies milk to the likes of Yeo Valley, Wyke Farms and Kendal Nutricare baby foods. As well as being the only 100% Organic dairy cooperative in the UK, they are also the only supplier of milk in Europe that come from farms that never use antibiotics.

A year ago Organic Herd launched an own range of speciality cheeses, butters and chocolates. None of these are available in supermarkets simply because the big chains expect to take such a big percentage of the sale price that, after production costs, there would be nothing left to go back to the farmers.

So instead these products are available through delis across the country, stores such as Planet Organic and in our vending machine at Woodhorn Farm!

All products are made by artisan producers that fit Organic Herd’s ethos (“How We Farm Matters”), are made to historical recipes, are additive free and of course are made from milk that is certified Organic and antibiotic free. Cheeses are made using traditional cultures and matured in wooden boxes, whilst butters are cream tumbled in 1960s butter barrels and then hand salted and churned in small batches.

Whilst this might seem an Organic Herd advertisement, it’s simply another part of our story and who we are at Woodhorn, supporting all the things we are trying to achieve.

Embracing new environmental schemes

Posted on July 25, 2024 by - Blog

irrigation

Environmental stewardship schemes, which DEFRA manages, aim to encourage farmers to put land aside to improve wildlife and reduce farming’s impact on the environment. As part of our role as custodians of this special area of Sussex farmland, we’ve embraced some of these schemes to help protect the environment. Cameron Lewis, our MD, shares details of some of the environmental schemes we’ve adopted on the Farm and the benefits we’re seeing.

Farming in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way is very important to us. Being part of national environmental schemes matches both our vision and mission as an organisation. There are clear benefits of taking part – for both the land, and our culture as a business. There’s also, it has to be said, an element of income support for the farm – which helps too!

We’re currently signed up to a 5-year Mid-Tier Countryside Stewardship Scheme, which runs until December 2026. We’re also part of a 3-year Sustainable Farming Initiative which runs to the same timeframe.

What’s involved in environmental schemes?

All schemes require a significant amount of additional work. This can range from additional soil testing to measure soil health, to planting specific seed mixes on a specific piece of ground that will feed birds through the winter months. We’ve got a number of measures in place that enhance our natural hedgerows and create wildlife corridors that shelter the smaller birds and mammals on the Farm. Other measures like planting winter cover crops or herbal grass leys help to reduce nutrient leaching into the water courses and lower the risks of soil erosion during heavy rainfall periods. We treat the management of these schemes like any other cash crop to ensure the measures we sign up to are effective and get the right attention through the farming year.

What are the benefits of taking part?

Over the last 25 years of being certified organic and participating in the numerous environmental schemes we’ve seen a huge increase in wildlife diversity. This is across the food chain too – from birds of prey to the insect life and improvements to soil health.

We’re very much in favour of these schemes. They’re always evolving, have generally improved and are easier to tailor. Getting a balance of farms in the UK producing food for the population as well as looking after the environment is challenging, but so important.

We’ve also gone further with some of our own environmental projects too, from installing solar energy for use on Farm, to working to ISO14001 international standards for environmental management. This acts as a framework for the business in setting continuous improvement goals and reducing our impact as a business on the environment we live in.

Hedge Laying

What’s next?

We’re keen to get more involved and sign up to more measures that will help the bio-diversity within the Farm estate. We’re also working on a Group-wide project to set out our longer-term plans around the environment, sustainability and how we govern the business to ensure these areas progress into the future.

Down On the Farm – July 2024

Posted on July 18, 2024 by - Blog

cows in farm shed

Reflecting on life down on the farm, John Pitts, our owner and fourth generation farmer at Woodhorn, shares some of the latest developments.

We have taken another positive step on our sustainability journey with the installation of solar panels at Reeds Farm which will provide renewable electricity to the dairy.  Our main demand for power comes from the milking parlour, the hot water required for milking plant sterilisation and the milk cooling in our bulk milk tank. In addition, our new pasteurisation plant will be entirely powered by solar energy, so hopefully another positive for those of you enjoying our milk from The Oving Cow Shed!

solar panel in field

Our main use for electricity at night is for lighting in the cow sheds when solar panels are asleep. We are about to upgrade all of our lights which will be significantly more energy efficient and will then consider installing a commercial battery storage system so that these too can run on solar power.

Harvest is approaching, although expectations are rather low this year following the incredibly wet winter and spring. Wet, cloddy seed beds inevitably meant that plant populations were low on emergence with many seeds not germinating. Across the country many thousands of acres were not able to be sown at all, so the farm team at Woodhorn did extremely well in the face of one of the most challenging springs in memory.

Continued wet weather created enormous disease pressure in all our crops and even conventional farmers, with the massive armoury of chemicals at the disposal, struggled to control the likes of septoria tritici in wheat and crown rust in oats. Being organic and chemical-free means that ‘disease years’ (like this one) significantly reduce our yields but one might argue that the ‘gap’ between Organic and Conventional farming systems is even more stark when the amount of chemicals applied is so high on other farms.

Whilst the subject matter of these articles is naturally governed by the title ‘Down on the Farm,’ I thought I would give a mention to our teams on our green waste sites at Tangmere and Runcton. Wet spring and summers inevitably generate more garden waste than normal, and this puts huge pressure on everyone during a time of year that is already extremely busy. What is more, the active composting material that has sat on-site over the winter is, inevitably, incredibly wet which has made screening the finished compost at best extremely challenging and at worst impossible. I often refer to the dedication of our farm teams and the same very much applies to all our staff involved in the composting enterprises. Thank you, all of you!

green waste being recycled

We are on course to process over 110,000 tons of waste this year, all of which would otherwise have been landfilled and as most of you know, we turn this into a variety of peat-free soils and compost mixes which we retail through our Earth Cycle brand. We are also currently providing c.8500 tons of a bespoke British Standard peat-free topsoil mix for the new sports pitches at Shopwyke Lakes, which have suffered significant delays due to the wet weather – are you noticing a theme to this article?!

Until autumn…

Down on the farm – March 24

Posted on March 23, 2024 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Group

At the time of writing it feels like there is no hope for an end to the rain. We have water lying in fields where I have never seen water before, winter sown crops have been severely damaged and some won’t recover, whilst we are unable to get near the land to sow our spring crops.

These concerns are overshadowed by the desperate need to let the cows out to grass as we are rapidly running out of our winter feed. There is plenty of grass for them but a few hours on saturated fields will create such a muddy mess that the grass will not recover for the rest of the year. In fairness, the cows aren’t aware that their larder is nearly empty and they wouldn’t leave their dry and warm cow shed anyway, even if we pushed them – and you try pushing 800Kg of obstinate cow where she doesn’t want to go!

Rainfall levels have been record breaking but we have to accept the weather is, as always, just ‘part of farming’. Our troubles are nothing compared to those of the poor souls whose homes have been flooded in the parish, sometimes with raw sewage. Our farm team have spent an enormous amount of time, effort and expense clearing and maintaining our ditch network this winter, as they do every year. This is our responsibility and of course we do not get recompensed. It is, however, intensely frustrating when our efforts are undermined by the refusal of the local authority, highways and water companies, to carry out their duties in the same way.

I wrote a while back about our net zero ambitions. The objective remains, but to my mind it needs to be much more nuanced. There is far too much ‘greenwashing’ and manipulation of numbers and messages in the name of ‘net zero’ throughout industry and even national governments. Furthermore, there is little clarity or agreement as to what should be measured, let alone how. We recently engaged an independent company to carry out a carbon audit on the farm and the results were encouraging – we are making good progress. However some of the advice as to what we should do to progress further was, to be blunt, absurd. An example: we naturally have some cows that produce less milk than others. This, according to the current metrics, makes these lower yielders less ‘efficient’ and therefore they use more resources per litre of milk produced than the higher more ‘efficient’ yielding cows. The advice? To kill the lower yielders and replace them with more ‘efficient’ higher yielding cows. If being carbon neutral means killing perfectly healthy, productive cows then ‘I’m Out’.

Our ambition has always been to produce top quality food whilst being fully aware of our responsibility to the environment from the flora and fauna on the farm, animal welfare and our role in the community, to our role in tackling climate change. Pursuing net zero in isolation appears to be contra to this and whilst it is disappointing to acknowledge, it is something we need to understand better. Our overall approach to farming maybe understood internally but we have never written it down.  Over the coming months I aim to (try) to create our own Woodhorn focused set of written policies and objectives that demonstrate and prove what we are doing (to our customers in particular) whilst helping us to learn where and how we can improve. The ambition to achieve net zero remains but we will do it our way and in a way, I hope, that has real meaning.

A day in the life – Mike Jupp, Commercial Director, The Woodhorn Group

Posted on March 5, 2024 by - Blog, Woodhorn Group

Meet Mike Jupp, our Commercial Director. In this meet the team blog series, you can find out more about our team, their roles and a what a typical working day looks like.

I’m normally in the office at about 7:45am and so my day tends to start early – around 6am. I’ve made a resolution to be more active as once I’m in the office I don’t get much of a chance to do any exercise. So at least once a week I’ll head to the gym for a circuit session on the way in. But most days, it’s a more gentle start; I’ll get up, make the tea, let the dogs outside and prepare their breakfast. Whilst home isn’t that far from the office, it takes about an hour to drive in so I’ll leave the house before 7am. It’s a busy part of the world and so I enjoy listening to the radio as it gives me something else to think about that’s not the traffic! It’s actually quite good to have some time to myself in the car as it gives me a chance to get my thoughts together for the day ahead and – on the way home – to mentally leave things behind or make some calls.

As the Commercial Director at Woodhorn I work closely with the teams across all of our departments. The first conversations in the morning are something I value, whether its discussing what the team got up to last night, what everyone watched on TV or what they ate for dinner. It gives us a chance to chat before the phones start ringing and the craziness of the day begins.

An industry of early starters

Across our certified soils, waste management and farming teams, we work with companies and individuals that typically start early. It’s not unusual to find a batch of emails or orders in my inbox even before I’ve left the house in the morning. Therefore, once the computer goes on, we’re hard at it, certainly for the first couple of hours of the day at least. Whilst I oversee the commercial side of things, I’ve been with the company more than a decade and so I know a lot of our customers extremely well. I like maintaining contact with them and have recently moved back to sit in the sales office because I still love the buzz. As a consequence, the short to-do list I start the day with tends to grow as I enjoy picking up the odd opportunity or deal myself.

I report to our Managing Director, Cameron, and because we’re a close-knit team, we regularly chat about various aspects of the business. Yes, there are the key times of the year such as the summer when we focus on developing new budgets for the coming financial year (which will end up being my targets!) and the winter when we look at bigger, strategic plans for growth and expansion; but we’ve developed a diverse business and so there’s always something to discuss regarding the day-to-day operations or opportunities.

A focus on soil and waste management

Whilst my background is in the horticultural sector, Cameron takes the lead on our farming activities, leaving me to manage certified soils and waste management. I work with our Materials Recycling Director, Morgan, on securing new waste contracts and have a sales team of three people who run soil sales including our retail brand Earth Cycle. Recently, however, a fair amount of my time has been dedicated to launching our milk vending operation. This takes milk from the farm and sells it direct to the public through some innovative vending machines. We opened our first location in Autumn 2023 and have big plans to expand this to other sites and sell more of our milk to restaurants and food producers locally. So having not been heavily involved in the dairy previously, it’s an area I’m getting to know well now.

I know a lot of people say that no two days are the same at work, but they’re really not here, especially because of the seasonality we encounter in each aspect of the business. For instance, our soil sales are non-stop from March to September with retail sales peaking around Easter or early summer, subject to the weather. Our green waste, however, tends to be offset to that and is busier from summer into the early winter. The farm is of course dictated by crops, harvest and calving but from a sales perspective can be quite busy over the autumn and winter as we sell our calves, crops and grains to various customers and merchants. Oh, and there’s always thousands of litres of milk to collect and sell every day too! So not only are no two days the same, what I am doing on those days will be dictated by the part of the business currently most in demand.

Establishing a B2C brand

As far as challenges go, growing the Earth Cycle brand is probably the one aspect of my job that has brought the most over the years. The majority of our work is about bulk, business to business transactions. Setting Earth Cycle up as a consumer facing brand with ecommerce and all that entails presented some interesting tests to the business model and our normal mode of operation. By and large we have overcome them and today, Earth Cycle is a highly successful part of our business and I anticipate that it will continue grow into a big enterprise of its own. I’ve enjoyed being part of that journey and helping it establish and flourish.

Having spent a lot of my previous career outside and selling, I still enjoy getting out and about. I’m based at head office but frequently visit our compost production sites in either Tangmere or Fawley. I also like to go and meet customers, do site visits, and catch up with some of our suppliers. Thankfully I’ve got a great team at the office, so I know that everything will be looked after, whilst I’m away.

Without my team I don’t think we’d have built the customer base we have. Our customers trust us as their supplier because they know the people they’re working with and they can rely on us. Working alongside these guys and being in a rural location are probably the things I love most about my job. Whilst the drive from home can be tortuous, once I arrive at work and take in the peace and quiet and the views and catch up with the team it all becomes worthwhile.   

Reviewing the day

Towards the end of each day, the team will come together to review the day’s sales, look at tomorrow and the remainder of the week and month. We analyse and track our performance against budget constantly and will share thoughts and ideas as to how we can correct the numbers or manage supply and demand to try and even out production. As noted, I start the day with a small, focused to-do list and this is the point where I prep that and look at what the following day will bring in terms of meetings, calls and visits. We end the day as a team much as we started it, having a friendly chat about any evening’s plans.

I’ll go home via the gym a couple of times a week to maintain my resolution to be more active and help break the journey and avoid the peak traffic. I also DJ occasionally so from time to time, I’m heading to go and do that. It’s busier around Christmas as I work in several venues across the festive period, but during the remainder of the year, Fridays and Saturdays are when I’m typically spinning the decks! It’s very different to the day job and I love listening to music and watching others enjoy it. As a family we have property in Spain and so my other relaxation includes holidays or long weekends there. It’s great to have a bolthole in the sun, especially during the autumn and winter; it always helps me recharge the batteries, ready for the next big push or project at work. 

Down on the farm – July 23

Posted on July 24, 2023 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm, Woodhorn Group

Another year, another drought! Another ‘Down on the Farm’ article, another frustrating delay to our milk vending project!

The latter is down to the continued delay of the supply of our pasteurising equipment. The only manufacture of the particularly specialised kit that we need is in Ireland and they have singularly failed to meet their promised delivery schedule. I sincerely hope by the time I write my next article we will be up and running. In the meantime, please help us choose our first milkshake flavours here.

Weather extremes, a principal feature of climate change, are becoming the norm.

 This year we had the driest February on record when just 3.8mm (0.1 inches) of rain fell. Compare this to our February historical average of 60mm (2.4 ins). Conversely, we had the wettest March and April for many years with a combined total of 148mm (6 ins) compared to an average of 52mm (2.1ins) for the same period. June and July are looking exceptionally dry like last year.

We aim to complete all our spring sowing in March, but the ground was so saturated that much of this was delayed until May. This significantly reduces yield potential and some fields or part of fields never dried out enough to sow at all. The high temperatures and lack of rainfall now is restricting grass and clover growth, both for grazing and to make silage for next winter’s feed reserves.

 Farmers Weekly has just run an in depth article “Dairy Farming in a Drought” which essentially takes the experiences of dairy farmers in New Zealand and Australia where droughts are the norm. My two ‘take aways’ following a bit more personal research, were how New Zealand dairying (one of largest producing countries in the world and the biggest contributor to its economy) manages drought with huge amounts of irrigation. However, this is becoming environmentally unsustainable as natural groundwater supplies are diminishing causing rivers and lakes to dry up, with over 60% severely polluted due to the intense use of artificial nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers which ‘runs off’ the land into the waterways, where the problem is exacerbated by the lack of water to create a dilution effect.

Australia’s farmers tend not to have the same access to irrigation and so the country has a significant and growing shortage of milk and dairy products forcing it to import much of its needs.

We are, as a nation and like Australia, importing more and more food. However, this is not (yet) because of drought but because of the power of the supermarkets and a lack of government interest in a food strategy generally. Like New Zealand, our water supplies are under pressure though but more as a result of our ever increasing population than from the needs of farming. However, as droughts become more common, the demand for scarce water supplies from both farming and people will increase. However, we continue to be blessed by guaranteed and plentiful winter rainfall. If we, as country and as farmers, invest in adequate infrastructure to collect and store that winter rain, we can meet all of our needs. The cost though of such infrastructure is inevitably enormous at both national and farm level.

After last year’s drought, we made some investment to create the ability to irrigate and we will do more over time. It is an expensive and challenging direction of travel, but one I think will be essential if we are to continue to grow food for our nation. Farming Organically (and so we don’t use the polluting fertilisers and chemicals) and if we are able to store winter rainfall, we will not cause the pollution problems seen in New Zealand

Harvest is not far away now and the harvest machinery and grain stores will be getting their final checks. Calving at Reeds farm starts in mid August.  We will be starting the Organic conversion at Madame Green Farm immediately post-harvest and will be sowing a variety of legume (clover and vetch for example) based crops which will start to rebuild the soil’s fertility and organic matter during the statutory conversion period – one can only sow the first organic crop two year’s after the last chemical or artificial fertiliser was applied, which means it will be nearly three years before we will harvest our first Organic crop.

John Pitts