24 Sep The small cow in the big picture
Since I came back to the Farm 2008 it has been an ongoing experiment to find the right animals and grazing system that works for our land and our soils. We didn’t want to choose a breed purely for the marbling of its meat or its aesthetics in a photograph (much to my wife’s disappointment!). We needed an animal that would thrive on the grass we grow here, that could happily spend winter outdoors and would convert that forage efficiently to protein. It has proven to be very difficult to monetise the benefits that come from having animals in our system, but we know that we would not be able to achieve the arable yields that we do without them. We would never argue that a suckler herd could make the same net margin as a conventional wheat farmer but it’s about looking at the bigger picture, understanding the widespread role of animals in the rotation and the resilience underpinning our system as a result of their input.
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