hey, so...diversification? Any one diversifyed from farming? Anyone got any plans to diversify? Any ideas? Because I mean, when 'the next generation' start farming, it is highly likely that the income can not come souly from farming, and so diversification is something that needs thinking about.

Common diversification schemes have been livery yards, farm shops, self picking, open farms, caravan/camping sites, holiday risorts, agricultural engineering, etc.

So if anyone would like to share..... 

well we have a butchers shop where we sell all of our own meat, apart from chickens gammon n bacon, which we opened 10 years ago this year.

I think that to a certian point diversification is a good way of keeping a farm alive however if the undertaken activities have no link to farming the initial reason can be lost and the farm will become smaller and smaller

Plant hire is the main plan and agriculutral demolition, most farm building round my way are ancient so it aint going to be to long until they come down!

Shame that agriculture would not be the main income, but when prices are as low as they are, who can blame anyone for diversifying.....

Steve

any one doing like 360 digger work could be gd for a little bit of extra cash

You could rent a small portion of one of your fields to a RC Aircraft club!!!!!

I want to set up a RC Helicopter club in the Wrexhan area but prefer to help out a struggling farmer than pay more money to the government for a bit of council land. RC Aircraft hobbies are on the increase at the moment, but existing clubs can only have X amount of members. So it might be worth farmers advertising if they are in an area with a hobby shop nearby. How much you could expect in rent would depend on how many members the club could muster up. This would depend on how many could fly at the same time, the club fees and the area itself. The nearer a big town or city, the better. Then you would need to have good access to the land and suitable parking surface.

Lots to consider. But hey, several hundred pounds per year!!!!!!!

we have a small caravan holiday site as well as storage, they are both exceptional earners when compared with farming for the work you put in which is more or less nill apart from a bit of admin and grass cutting. only small thing is you need to be fairly close (within a couple of miles) of a town to get any significant numbers of caravans for storage. even then the council can be right so and so's about it they even argued about what shade fo green we were allowed to paint a gate.

letting land for shooting can be good if your in the right part of the country, i think the south west is good as loads of londoners pay big money to go game shoointg there. 

 theres always contracting too, buy a nice new tractor and baler and go bale for people or hedgecutting.

i saw abotu something in australia a while back where people would pay to go and work on a cattle ranch out there for a week, dunno hwo well it would work here though

 wouldnt let me edit the other post so ill put it here:

also theres the options of either renting out a field to people on motorbikes/quads to ride round or going more full out and making a propper track in  a field maybe getting your own bikes for people to pay to use.

fishing ponds to can be good