Farmers Weekly Awards 2026: Beef Farmer of the Year

Graham Parks of Overbank Farm, Macclesfield, Cheshire, is the winner of Farmers Weekly Awards 2026 Beef Farmer of the Year.

Tenant farmer Graham Parks has built a highly efficient dairy-beef enterprise through exceptional grassland management and good cost management.

See also: FW Awards 2026: Meet the finalists

This is helping him generate a gross margin of more than £2,000/ha.

Graham began his farming career on a 20ha county council holding before securing a 12-year Farm business Tenancy at Overbank Farm, near Macclesfield.

He previously worked on a spring-calving dairy farm, and this has shaped the vision for his own enterprise.

He has adopted dairy grassland management principles to deliver impressive output of 720kg deadweight per ha from remarkably low purchased inputs – 450kg of soya-free concentrate throughout their lifetime.

Each year, Graham purchases 250 calves from a spring-block dairy farmer.

The calves are bred from Jersey-cross dairy cows and sired by Aberdeen Angus and Hereford bulls, which makes them well-suited to his forage-based finishing system.

Calves arrive between seven and 14 days old over a six-week period. They are reared in groups of 35-40 using a 50-teat milk buggy.

They receive milk replacer twice daily for six weeks before being weaned over a fortnight.

After weaning, calves are transitioned to grass and will receive a strategic amount of concentrate over the next three grazing seasons.

Grass at the heart of the system

Graham runs a grazing system that many dairy farmers would be envious of, with yields of 12 t/ha over the last two years.

Cattle remain outdoors for around eight months, from early March until the end of October.

A leader-follower grazing system maintains pasture quality, with older animals grazing behind youngstock to achieve target residuals of 1,500kg dry matter/ha on two- to three-day paddock allocations.

The farm’s sandy-loam soils are susceptible to drought, so Graham has introduced more herbal leys through the Sustainable Farming Incentive to improve pasture resilience.

Surplus grazing grass is conserved as silage after the first rotation, regularly analysing 11.5-12MJ ME and 15-16% crude protein.

The aim is to finish all cattle during their third grazing season before housing.

Around two-thirds of finished cattle are marketed through Grassroots Farming for a regenerative premium, with the remainder sold to Dunbia.

Farming alongside nature

Environmental management is woven into the business. More than 1,500m of waterways have been fenced to create valuable wildlife corridors, while hedges are cut on a two-year rotation.

Wildlife surveys have recorded 23 bird species, reflecting the biodiversity benefits of Graham’s management.

With limited time remaining on his tenancy, Graham is already planning the next chapter by relocating the business to 16ha of owned land alongside rented ground.

But he has no plans to retire quite yet and, like any perfectionist, is constantly seeking improvements.

He is currently working closely with his vets to understand how he can improve early-life growth rates by adopting lung scanning and weighing more regularly.

What the judges say

Graham has built a resilient dairy-beef enterprise from scratch, having started on a small county council farm. He combines outstanding grassland management and low input costs to achieve impressive output per hectare.