Working with nature can be at the heart of profitable business
OUR family farm at Balbirnie Home Farms is a 1550 ha mixed lowland farm in Fife where we farm combinable crops, vegetables, beef cattle and forestry.
Three-quarters of our revenue comes from arable crops and one-quarter livestock – but it’s a ratio we are slowly changing.
In recent years, we set out to improve our profit margins by working with the natural environment. We began looking at our farm holistically through wholefarm planning.
We now focus less on keeping our enterprises in silo and, instead, integrate them as much as possible to improve soil health, reduce inputs and maximise the co-benefits of a mixed farm.
There is strength in diversity and we do what we can to increase it within our arable systems, including integrating livestock so they can fertilise the fields and help cycle nutrients.
We have re-introduced short-term leys and forage crops, and in the summer months the cattle graze on a diversity of plants, such as vetches, clovers, and sunflowers, ensuring living roots are kept in the soil for nutrient cycling yearround.
We have reduced our tillage and plant multi-species cover crops over winter and throughout the growing season. This provides a vital food source for soil microbiology while keeping few fields bare over winter – a crucial move in building a healthy ecosystem that supports resilient food production.
Pasture-feeding our cattle outdoors and growing more forage has been
MIXED FARMING cheaper than housing indoors and feeding on grain. Rotating the herd between paddocks lengthened the rest period, so that we can now grow more grass.
This is the cheapest way we know to feed ruminants and the increased rest allows us to achieve greater biodiversity above and below the soil.
We will soon plant 1500 fruit and nut trees in 15 avenues, 40m apart, in a 40 hae agro-orchard and we plan to establish 4m beetle bank strips to harbour natural predators.
More biodiversity means more resilience, more water-holding capacity in the soil and more plants and wildlife doing for free what we are used to paying for out of a bag. We don’t plant our vegetables to the edges and the margins are planted with plenty of flowering plants to support pollination.
This cycle of reciprocity between improving soil health and restoring biodiversity means our livestock and arable systems are working in partnership with the environment to the benefit of reduced costs.
Through an integrated wholefarm approach, we have been able to eliminate insecticides on our arable ground and reduced herbicides, fungicides and synthetic fertilisers, with a target of reducing them to zero.
This is a welcome outcome given this year’s rise in input prices, with the cost of concentrate livestock feed up by 40%, feed wheat by 80% and soyabean meal by 50%. Not to mention that prices per tonne of ammonium nitrate have been four times higher than two years previously. These costs have become unsustainable.
Implementing environmental practices wouldn’t be worthwhile if they weren’t profitable for the business and many involve spending less by allowing nature to do what it does best.
This approach means that economic net margins are maintained and, in some cases, improved due to the savings in overheads, particularly on sheds and winter feed for cattle. Nature-friendly farming means business-friendly farming, and it’s proved to be a win-win for us.