Farmers Weekly Awards 2025: Beef Farmer of the Year

Jonathan Chapman of Atlantic Angus, Holsworthy in Cornwall is the Farmers Weekly Awards 2025 Beef Farmer of the Year.

Jonathan has developed a profitable beef enterprise that is rooted in resilience.

Having a clear focus on efficiency is at the heart of the business and lays the foundation for breeding, grassland management and soil health.

See also: FW Awards: Meet the 2025 Beef Farmer of the Year finalists

Cows calve indoors in a tight seven-week block (heifers in five weeks).

This year, he has achieved a 100% calving rate with 75% of cows calving within three weeks.

Jonathan uses a suite of technology to support decision-making. He has created a bespoke app to record calving outcomes, using artificial intelligence to analyse herd performance.

The herd is benchmarked on Breedplan and is above average for calving ease, intra-muscular fat and gestation length.

Overcoming challenges

Alongside his wife, Judith, he has diversified with six holiday cottages and a small farm shop selling their own beef. They have added 121ha on a five-year farm business tenancy.

This has enabled them to extend the grazing season and outwinter some cows and in-calf heifers, reducing housing costs.

Being in a high-risk area for TB, they have increased their holding numbers to three in case of a breakdown. They also have an isolation unit.

But what really sets Jonathan apart is his unwavering focus on consumer demand and foresight to look ahead and address requirements head-on.

He has worked with other farmers to develop the GoodBeef index. This assesses production, eating quality and environmental credentials and scores individual animals out of 120.

About two to three animals are sold through the farm shop annually, and QR codes on packs of meat list the scores, providing full traceability.

“The farm shop helps us to connect with the holiday cottage guests and we run weekly farm walks every Tuesday evening. It’s good for us to see what people not connected with farming think,” he says.

Environmental focus

Jonathan is ahead of the game when it comes to environmental baselining. Preliminary data from the past two years show he is sequestering 22t of carbon/ha a year.

The entire farm is within Sustainable Farming Incentive agreements, growing vast areas of herbal leys and red clover. There are 70km of Cornish hedges, cut intermittently, and 40ha of culm pasture, a priority habitat.

As a farm vet, Jonathan’s herd health plan is robust. Stock is vaccinated for bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD), infectious bovine rhinotracheitis and bluetongue, and the herd is BVD-free.

Dung counts are checked for parasites, with only youngstock treated for worms. Kill sheets are monitored for fluke, and animals treated accordingly. Fly treatments and Ivermectin have been cut out to preserve dock beetles.

Jonathan is constantly evolving to capitalise on new markets and sees a market in producing Black Baldies for commercial suckler enterprises.

What the judges say

“Jonathan is a shining example of a profitable beef farmer. He is ticking all the boxes and will be a guiding light as the industry transitions to an era without the Basic Payment Scheme.”