Sustainable Farming & Expert Wild Bird Food Ivel Valley Bird Food
When it comes to food and farming, 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 awardwinning sustainable business growing and supplying some of the best wild bird food available on the UK market.
A Family Affair
You may recognise the Parrish family name as one of the UK’s biggest suppliers of onions and shallots. But despite the success of its vegetable business, the Parrish brothers had an additional passion they wanted to pursue. Nick and James wanted to accommodate and preserve local wildlife, so they began experimenting with wild bird food. Using a combination of home-grown cereals and UK ingredients, they developed a core range of premium 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.
“Sustainability is 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, sunlowers, 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.”
High Quality for High Flyers
Nick and James appreciate the importance of producing high-quality wild bird food. To ensure their products contained the proper nutrition, they enlisted the help of Mike Smith, the farm expert ornithologist who has an MSc in Ornithology. With the help of Mike, Ivel Valley developed various seed and suet ranges around key nutritional ingredients with the aim of supplying birds with a healthy, high-energy food source. Importantly, all Ivel Valley’s seed mixes are free from wheat and generic
fillers.
Playing our Part
As well as keeping British birds healthy and happy, Ivel Valley is working towards keeping the planet happy as well. Nearly all of Ivel Valley’s packaging is fully recyclable paper or biodegradable plastic. They will continue working towards 100% eco-friendly packaging across their whole product range. www.ivelvalleybirdfood.co.uk