NIGEL AKEHURST VISITS: LOMAS FARM
REDUCING TIME
UNDER COVER This month Nigel Akehurst visits Lomas Farm in Sandhurst, Kent, to visit ex-intensive dairy farmer turned cattle mob grazier David Cornforth.
10
David, along with local farming colleague and friend Fergus Henderson, is part of a small but growing community of ‘regenerative mob graziers’ in the South East. Both are ex-dairy farmers now in their early sixties. They started experimenting with mob grazing around 10 years ago after David and his family returned from a year working on a dairy farm in New Zealand. “After renting the land out, we as a family with four young children went out to New Zealand for a year to help out a friend with a share milking job on the Canterbury plains. “It was out there I realised the advantages of rotating animals through paddocks and resting the grazed plant,” he said. Returning home from New Zealand in 2003, David was faced with an empty farm and very few assets with which to restock, so he worked off-farm for six
years, renting out ground to graziers while increasing a small herd of his own. As the herd grew, he took all the land back in hand and moved his few animals around the land daily. Being understocked it took a long time to graze the whole farm and he began to notice the grass grow longer, especially in the autumn. This allowed David to keep his cattle out grazing until much later, when all the neighbouring farms (who set stock their cattle) had lost farm cover and were having to house their animals. Around the same time a woodsman friend of Fergus mentioned michorizal fungus and suggested they read Graham Harvey’s books. They both then began researching the topic in more depth; reading reports and watching YouTube lectures around soil health and grazing practices. “Regenerative Nuffield reports such as the ones
J U LY 2 0 2 1 | W W W. S O U T H E A S T FA R M E R . N E T
by Tom Chapman, Rob Richmond and latterly Andy Howard really whetted my appetite and thirst for knowledge – going back to school in my fifties,” he said.
INTENSIVE DAIRY FARMING
Before his trip to New Zealand, David had farmed with his brother in his native Yorkshire, where he grew up. In 1996 he bought Lomas Farm and moved south. He brought a small herd of dairy cows with him and in doing so moved from a relatively low but profitable milk production to a high input, high maize inclusion diet feeding system. After a few years it became clear the system wasn’t sustainable. “It was hard on the cows, hard on me as a one-man band but worst of all it was destroying the farm’s soil,” he said. “The heavy clay soil and yo-yoing between too wet and too dry made it difficult to
