The second of the HGCA’s eight monitor farms across England and Wales was launched last week in the South West. Olivia Cooper travelled to mid-Devon to meet the host and find out how the programme will boost his business.

James Lee’s family have been farming at Uppincott Farm for 102 years – the past two of which have been as owner-occupiers after a century as tenants.

Based near Crediton, Devon, it is a traditional mixed farm, with its rolling hills home to 70 suckler cows, 350 ewes and 142ha of combinable crops. A perfect meeting place for the 50 West Country arable farmers who are taking part in the HGCA’s new monitor farm programme.

See also Eight become HGCA’s latest monitor farmers

The aim of the monitor farms is to focus on improving the profitability of participants’ businesses by sharing and debating the decision-making process around arable production.

Mr Lee has seen benchmarking working well in New Zealand and Australia, and believes it’s a really good way to share information and raise performance.

“I’ve picked up a lot from farm walks, and thought it would be good to get a discussion group going; it works well in the dairy industry and it’s always good to bounce ideas off each other.”

Philip Dolbear, South West regional manager at the HGCA, says this is a real farm with real figures and real-time issues.

“The idea is for everyone to put their figures into our benchmarking model and really challenge each other to move all their businesses forward,” he adds.

Spreading workload

As well as the 142ha at home, the Lee family partnership – which includes James’ father Nick and brother Jonathan – has 121ha on a farm business tenancy and 61ha of summer grazing. They also run a contracting business – drilling, combining, grass silaging and spraying almost 1215ha a year.

“We’ve got a Claydon Hybrid 4m drill, a power harrow combination, Berthoud 24m sprayer, John Deere 2256 Hillmaster combine and three mainline tractors,” says Mr Lee.

“Contracting spreads the workload and we’ve invested a lot in kit over the past two years.”

However, the cost of tractors is a big concern, he adds. “It’s just getting past sensible, so we’re running up long hours on tractors. I’m not sure how to manage that going forward; one possibility is collaborating with other farmers to buy and share secondary machinery.”

One aspect that sets the contracting business and farm apart is the Claydon drill, with all arable crops on the farm now sown using minimum tillage.

“We have a lot of slopes and wanted to minimise soil erosion, as well as freeing up labour time. We can’t control fertiliser and spray costs, but we can control how we farm,” say Mr Lee.

The soils are generally sandy medium loams, so raising soil organic matter with manure, chopped straw and bought-in compost is important, particularly on the sandier soils, he adds.

“If we can get soils working well and use less bought-in phosphate and potash it’s got to be a good thing. We’re also using liquid fertiliser this year – with our small fields it’s vital to get the headlands performing well.”

Beans introduced

With their relatively small arable acreage, getting crops established well is a priority, even if that means changing cropping plans, says Mr Lee.

“We’re growing winter beans this year for the first time – we had planned to drill spring beans, but the opportunity was there last autumn, so we went with it.”

This year Mr Lee is also growing spring barley and spring wheat for seed, as it was too wet to drill winter wheat in some fields.

“We’ve got some old stone drains that are in need of maintenance. Our grain store is getting old as well – but that said, we have a mobile batch drier that’s 20 years old and still works well.”

Being close to Crediton means the wheat goes straight into Crediton Milling, with other crops, including oilseed rape, either stored on farm or at Devon Grain, says Mr Lee.

“We also grow quite a lot of maize, which we sell direct to local dairy farmers. This year we used a demonstration strip-till drill to establish it – minimum tillage makes it easier to harvest maize in good autumn conditions.”

Rotating oats/lupins, grass leys and other arable crops also improves soil condition and yields, he adds.

“I would like to use the sheep more on the arable land, but the lamb price is so bad I don’t think it’s worth it.

“Once we’ve got a good soil structure from grass we’ll spray it off and direct drill wheat after it – I don’t want to plough it up and lose all those benefits.”