Shed investment stems tenants income decline
Shed investment stems tenants income decline
OVER the last two years Dingestow Estate tenants Nick and Cathy Sprackling have seen income from their 90 milkers crash.
Rent reduction?
They considered asking Anthony Bosanquet for a rent reduction but decided instead to request a new building that would allow them to increase the herd to a more economic 120 cows. The £25,000 investment in the new shed at Ty Mawr farm will be finished soon.
"Any rent cut would not have been significant, but this building will give us a chance to farm out way out of our problems," said Mr Sprackling. "We are matching the landlords investment in terms of stock and labour to try to stay in business. We are not making money but we want to continue farming because it gives us things that would be difficult to buy with money."
Right and proper
Mr Bosanquet said it was right and proper for tenants who had suffered a catastrophic fall in incomes to ask for a rent review. It was not in a landlords interest for a tenant to go out of business. But he warned that if rents fell so too would new investment and maintenance.
He admitted that when the previous tenant retired he had looked at the figures for splitting up the 75ha (186 acre) heavy clay unit.
But while he was uncomfortable with the romanticised view often taken of family farms, he was a traditional landlord and supported the way the tenant farm sector provided a farming ladder.
By re-letting Ty Mawr he allowed the Spracklings, who already proved themselves on a Gloucester county council smallholding, to move up another step.