FEATURE
FEATURED FARMER GEORGE YOUNG
FOBBING FARM As based on information found on Agricology (www.agricology.co.uk) Farm Facts FARM SIZE: 485 hectares (1,200 acres) MANPOWER: 1 FTE. My time is spent 20% on the farm, 80% in the office. Dad is about 5% of an additional employee FARM TYPE: Mixed TENURE: Owner occupied REGION: South East England RAINFALL: 590 mm ALTITUDE: 0 - 20 m above sea level SOIL: Grade 3 and grade 4 heavy London clay APPROACH: Integrated Farming KEY FARMING PRACTICES: No Till Novel crops Mixed farming Agroforestry Diverse leys Cover crops Direct drilling Direct selling Diversified rotation Habitat creation Homegrown feed Leys
"My main goals in farming are two-fold: farming with nature as much as I possibly can, and achieving as diverse a range of nutritional diversity on the farm as possible" The Farm: Fobbing Farm is a 1,200 acre (485 hectare) zero tillage and zero insecticide arable and livestock farm in south Essex. We are not on the highest quality land, so my farming approach works with that. When I came home to the family farm in 2013, we were reasonably conventional farmers, occasionally ploughing, with standard chemical inputs, growing milling wheat; 7.5 tonnes (t) / hectare (ha), oilseed rape; 2 - 4 t / ha, and peas; 2.5 - 4.5 t / ha, with cattle primarily on permanent grass marshes and not integrated into the rotation. In the intervening years, I have introduced linseed, beans, heritage cereals, buckwheat, lentils, hemp, and am experimenting with sunflowers, millet, heritage corn and tiger nuts. I have also established 20% of the farm into herbal leys, and am currently investigating what dual purpose beef and dairy herd I would like. At the end of 2020, I am planting my first field of agroforestry, 6 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
with approximately 7,000 trees to be planted. These trees include a large portion of fruit and nut trees (including one belt of exotic trees - banking on climate change - almonds, persimmon, olives), plus birch trees (to harvest the sap for sugar or birch sap champagne), willow for tree mulch, and some woodland / timber trees also. I started working with Hodmedod in 2018, and have also been working on direct marketing my products, particularly to bakeries. I am about to take delivery of a flour stonemill, which will allow me to make flour of my heritage grains and buckwheat, and am hoping to be able to afford a decorticator for my buckwheat this year such that I can sell the groats. I also developed my older farm buildings into commercial units. Agroecology is what drives me in farming. It is what I understand to be a whole farm approach based around incorporating nature into a farming system, but extends also to the way that farm products are marketed. Watch the video below to find out more...
Agroecology Agroecology is a word which is rapidly entering the farming vernacular, yet risks being misunderstood and oversimplified. Agroecology is a whole farm approach based around incorporating nature into a farming system, but extends also to the way that farm products are marketed. The FAO actually has a superb ten point definition available on their website: www.fao.org/agroecology The key points on farm for me are: - plant diversity with reduced artificial inputs; - circular farming; and - provision of wildlife habitat close to my fields. Plant diversity is pretty simple. I now grow a plethora of crops with different establishment and harvest times, and have introduced perennial, diverse species leys. These leys are grazed by cattle, so plant carbon is converted to dung, ensuring that a huge wave of ecology and nature can exist and thrive. Aiming to farm in a circular fashion is the aim to remove waste from the system. This is something I am ISSUE 12 | JANUARY 2021
