Ivel Valley
Sustainable Farming & Expert Wild Bird Food
When it comes to food and farming in 2021, sustainability is key. For James and Nick Parrish, sustainability practices have elevated the Parrish’s operation from a family-run farm growing onions and shallots to an award-winning sustainable business growing and supplying some of the best wild bird food available on the UK market today.
Ivel Valley Bird Food has swept up a host of accolades since its inception, including The Best Wild Bird Food Supplier 2019 (UK Enterprise Awards 2019) and 10,000 5-star reviews from its customers, all of which are a testament to the hard work and passion the brothers have put into growing their sustainably-run bird food business.
A Family Affair
You may recognise the Parrish family name as one of the UK’s biggest and most longstanding suppliers of onions and shallots. And when it comes to the winter months, the Parrish’s dominate the pickling market with their premium quality pickling onions.
However, despite the success of its vegetable business, the wildlife-conscious Parrish brothers wanted to pursue a different passion. They spent much of the early 2010’s experimenting with a wide range of wild bird food products behind the scenes and finally, using a combination of home-grown cereals, UK ingredients and a desire to accommodate and preserve local wildlife, Nick and James developed a core range of premium wild bird food products and Ivel Valley Wild Bird Food was born.
Sustainable Farming
Despite fast growth as a modern business, Ivel Valley has strived to preserve the history of its 100-year-old family-run farm, combining its historic infrastructure with modern technology. The original farm buildings now house offices and state of the art produce stores, powered by renewable energy from the farms’ solar panels and wind turbines, highlighting the Parrish’s dedication to being a sustainable and thriving business.
“Sustainability is always at the core of what we do” says James Parrish “which is why we have adopted precision farming techniques throughout the farm to optimise
resources required to grow all of our crops including; wheat, millet, sunflower seeds, onions, shallots, and potatoes. Renewable energy is used to help run the stores with over 400kw of solar panels installed over the farm. We also have our wind turbine and even use water from our reservoir to irrigate our farms.”
All produce from the farm is grown under the L.E.A.F. (Linking Environment and Farming) protocol. The LEAF approach is built around the whole-farm principles of Integrated Farm Management, which achieves a balance between the best modern technology and sound traditional methods, whilst enriching the environment and, most importantly, the soil.
All of Ivel Valley’s fields are surrounded by various cover crops that encourage biodiversity and wildlife around the Bedfordshire countryside, attracting several species of rare birds, mammals and reptiles to the farm.
High Quality for High Flyers
Keen birders themselves, Nick and James appreciate the importance of producing high-quality wild bird food. To ensure that our native birds are fed on food high in the correct nutrition they enlisted the help of Mike Smith, the farms expert ornithologist, who has an MSc in Ornithology, specifically studying the supplementary feeding of garden birds.
With the help of Mike, Ivel Valley developed various seed and suet ranges around key nutritional ingredients including; suet, oats, seeds, nuts, fruit and insects, with the aim of minimising waste and maximising energy.
Importantly, all of Ivel Valley’s seed mixes are free from wheat and generic fillers like corn and peas. All ingredients are chosen for their high nutritional value, with a range of bespoke mixes designed for birds with specific feeding habits like Robins and Finches.
Homemade Products
As well as seed mixes, the team behind Ivel Valley Bird Food also produce an impressive range of suet products. Each suet pellet, ball, block, log and coconut, is made from the finest quality UK suet and mixed with quality seeds and healthy additives, such as insects and fruit, to make suet products that are full of nutrients for wild birds.
In 2020 Ivel Valley invested heavily in new state of the art machinery to make suet production even more efficient. Improving efficiency means Ivel Valley can dedicate even more time to researching and implementing new environmentally friendly and recyclable packaging solutions.
As well as keeping British birds healthy and happy, Ivel Valley are working towards keeping the planet happy, too. Nearly all of Ivel Valley’s packaging is fully recyclable paper or biodegradable plastic and they will continue working towards 100% ecofriendly packaging across the whole product range in 2021.