WEBVTT

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then covid hit and the prices of everything rocketed sky high and i did go into like a a downward spiral of depression and financial difficulty i think we lost a hundred thousand pounds a year over three years um whilst selling everything we've got as well i

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ended up um filling my whole house full of peonies and doing tiktoks um basically in desperation of uh um

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TikTok was taking off during COVID,

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so

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I thought we'd give it a go.

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And a couple of the videos done all right,

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and it gave me a little bit of motivation to carry on.

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I sold over 100,000 stems of peonies direct to the consumer in the post for four times more money than what the supermarkets paid.

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My name's David Wheatley,

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and sometimes people don't take me seriously.

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I grow peonies,

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and peonies,

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each variety,

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only lasts for two weeks picking.

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and

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50% of the flowers will probably be picked in two to three days at a time.

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To get them at their best you want to have them while I'm picking.

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I can store them for three to four weeks in cold storage but they're always best when they're freshly picked.

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Back in 2020 during Covid,

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David decided to start posting videos on social media to save his farm.

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He needed to connect directly with potential customers to sell his produce.

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And after that was quite successful,

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he decided to continue posting almost every day over the last few years.

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He has now hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram and tens of millions of people have watched his videos.

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I really love the content he's posting because it's so raw,

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honest,

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unfiltered.

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David is sharing his everyday struggles on the farm,

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the successes,

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the challenges,

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the failures.

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All of that in a very honest and natural way.

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Most people know David for his short video format on social media.

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But today we have a long format conversation where we get to know David better.

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We get to understand his farm and context,

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his problems and struggles and the solutions he's coming up with to solve them and his vision for the future.

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This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital.

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I'm your host,

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Raphael.

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And this is the Deep Seat

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Podcast. Hi David,

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welcome to the Deep Seat Podcast.

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No,

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it's good to be here.

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Thank you very much for inviting me.

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How are you doing today?

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I'm very well,

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thank you.

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I feel quite good.

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Yeah,

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I'm really pleased that you took time to receive me on a Sunday morning.

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Yeah,

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yeah.

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Well,

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I'm getting in the habit of saying yes to most things now.

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And although I do feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes talking in front of real people,

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but it's getting better and easier now.

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Right.

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You find it easier talking in front of the camera when you're recording yourself?

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Well,

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when I'm by myself,

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that's fine because nobody's there and nobody's there to judge or anything.

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And although there's like there might be millions of people that might watch it,

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that doesn't seem to bother me a lot.

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When I'm in front of real people,

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I usually mess up a little bit or get my words mixed up.

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So you have to bear with me a little bit.

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Okay,

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yeah.

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But so that we can get to know you a little bit better before we get deeper into the conversation,

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maybe you could sort of introduce yourself for the listeners.

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Yeah.

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So for anybody that doesn't know,

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my name's David Wheatley.

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I'm a fourth generation farmer,

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but my family,

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they own like 80 acres of land.

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which my granddad had and then my father there wasn't enough for him as well so he he managed to get a council farm um which uh uh is renting from cambridge county council and i grew up on a cambridge county council farm all

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of my life and then i ended up um applying and getting one for myself um you start off with a start holding of um i think it was 32 acres a bare land and then over a period of time

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you build up your money and your machinery and your knowledge of,

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we were growing wheat and potatoes and sugar beet at the time.

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And then after a period of time,

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more land becomes available,

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and then you apply for that and see if you can get it,

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basically like a job.

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And then in the year 2000,

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we moved to this farm,

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and it's eventually got up to 450 acres of predominantly arable land.

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But there was some orchards.

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and woodland that come with it.

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Great.

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Now that we have a little bit of the history of the farm,

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could you maybe tell us what you've been farming the last few years,

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so we sort of get a picture of your current situation?

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Yeah,

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so predominantly the arable is

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Pretty much stayed the same.

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Wheat,

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potatoes and sugar beet,

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although we dropped the potatoes a few years ago.

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We do grow some more seed rate,

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field beans and barley,

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depending on what the weather's like.

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But we're fairly heavy lambs,

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so it suits to autumn cropping than spring cropping.

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Although the sugar beet has been,

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it does grow a crop where some of the other crops,

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if it's a dry year,

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it's a bit hit or miss,

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whether the bugs or the weather will get it going enough.

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in order to get enough yield to make some money on it.

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And then the rest of the farm was made up.

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We had a

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22-acre neglected old orchard when we first moved here,

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which I knew nothing about apples at the time.

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We put that into an environmental scheme,

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which is subsidised by the Royal Payments Agency at the time,

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in order to preserve old orchards as an old orchard restoration,

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because they've got a wildlife value.

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for basically the habitat.

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It's nearly as good as ancient woodlands in a much smaller space of time.

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That got me into farming with no sprays and fertilizers in my orchard,

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although I do use sprays and chemicals and fertilizers on the rest of the arable.

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And then there was also,

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as council farms go,

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they used to be all split up into two to five acre blocks probably about 50 years ago.

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And there was one guy left on this holding,

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which was on a lifetime tenancy.

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He had two acres of peonies in the middle of one of my fields.

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And he was probably about 60 years old at the time.

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But they're quite hard work.

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And I got to know him and helped him for eight years,

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which taught me everything there is to know about peonies as well.

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So peonies are a cut flower.

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So you plant your seed,

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you have to wait three years for it to flower.

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But once they're down,

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as long as you maintain the weeds and look after them.

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They'll keep producing cut flowers every year that he used to sell to Covent Garden.

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And then when he sadly passed away,

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he gave the field to me,

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or he just left the seeds there.

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And then I also bought some off his wife and expanded the area up to seven acres of peonies,

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which we eventually supplied to supermarkets and other local markets and florists and shops.

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You've also recently,

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well,

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a few years ago,

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started using social media to talk about your daily lives on the farm and to try and connect more directly with the customer.

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Can you tell us a little bit about that?

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Yeah,

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well,

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I'm not very good at talking to people at the best of times or wasn't.

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But we in 2019,

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we did have a fire on the farm,

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which took out

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95% of everything that we that we owned.

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And we were insured and everything.

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But,

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um,

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When it come to rebuild everything,

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then COVID hit and the prices of everything rocketed sky high.

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And I did go into like a downward spiral of depression and financial difficulty.

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I think we lost

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£100,000 a year over three years while selling everything we've got as well.

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And

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COVID hit the flowers badly as well.

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We could still supply some to the supermarkets,

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but all the other markets were gone.

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and we'd picked all the flowers and we had to either dump them um uh but instead of dumping them straight away i ended up um filling my whole house full of peonies and doing tiktoks um basically

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in desperation of uh um tiktok was taking off during covid so um i thought we'd Give it a go.

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And...

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And a couple of the videos done all right and it gave me a little bit of motivation to like carry on and we started posting more just about the flowers basically on social media and started selling directing the consumer the following year.

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With the cut flowers,

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sending

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15 stem boxes anywhere in the UK.

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And although it didn't pick up straight away,

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I started off small.

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And this year was the first year I actually said no to the supermarkets.

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I sold over 100,000 stems of peonies direct to the consumer in the post for four times more money than what the supermarkets paid.

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So when you say stems,

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what are we talking about?

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A stem is,

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so peonies grow in stems and you get paid in stems.

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So you have to walk through the beds of the peonies.

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So you get a clump of peonies and they might have 10 stems on a plant,

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but they don't all come at the same time.

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So it's all

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It's got to be done manually by hand.

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So we have some saccatares or I have a penknife.

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And then you pick them individually in stems.

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And then we sell them in stems.

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So we either sell them in a

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15-stem box or a 50-stem box or whatever you want.

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And it's also become a lot easier because I can send them on the day that they're picked.

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I don't have to refrigerate them.

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I've got no risk of waiting until we've got a whole lorry full of peonies.

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And then you can store them in a cold store.

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And the thing is,

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each individual variety lasts for two weeks.

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But in three days,

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we can pick 60%

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of the crop.

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And if it's hot,

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we'll have to pick 80%

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of the crop in three days.

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But we don't know what three days that is.

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So you have enough labour to pick them at the correct stage.

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And if you do it wrong or get it wrong,

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then they'll either get damaged or won't open.

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So they are a tricky crop to deal with.

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And I do like them.

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that they are so tricky because um i can compete against other bigger farmers that may want to plant like 100 acres of peonies or something because they are i feel like they are um they are sought after and people do like them

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But it's really difficult and it's easy to mess it all up and everything goes wrong.

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So because I've been doing it for so long,

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I feel like I'm in a better position than some other people.

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And the social media as well.

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I can change things from a day-to-day basis because we don't know what we've got until we've got it.

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So I can put stuff out there,

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tell people what I've got available.

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And this year it has...

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They have sold really easily and really well.

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And we're just about getting the price that we need it to be in order to make the farm good again.

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Yeah.

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I suppose the difference between selling directly to customers and selling to supermarkets must be quite significant.

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It's amazing.

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If you sell stuff cheaply to the supermarket,

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you don't see any other benefits apart from the money that you do get for them.

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What I started off doing is,

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and because I wasn't,

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nobody knew who I was.

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Nobody knows where you are.

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And even if you've got the best product in the world of what you think it is,

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nobody's going to buy off you.

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So I started off cheap.

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And the thing is,

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if you start off cheap and offer a good service and offer something that people can't get anywhere else,

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and it's bringing back the contact to the public again.

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where we've lost all that from the supermarket.

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We haven't got human contact with anything.

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And although it's over social media,

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I'm in front of people 24 hours a day.

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And

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I feel amazed of how well it's worked.

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And

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I don't meet many people now that don't know who I am.

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And before we started on social media,

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not even my family knew I grew flowers.

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Whereas it seems like the whole world knows,

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not only knows that I grow peonies,

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but they know what a peony is.

251
00:13:32.640 --> 00:13:36.302
because not many people know what it is or what to do with it.

252
00:13:36.682 --> 00:13:37.683
And they're tricky as well.

253
00:13:37.723 --> 00:13:42.265
So not only have I got the customers that grow them themselves and are interested to find out more,

254
00:13:42.706 --> 00:13:47.008
I've also got people that know more than me and then they're telling me what to do as well.

255
00:13:47.068 --> 00:13:51.570
So it's the point of contact that we're not going to get anywhere else.

256
00:13:51.891 --> 00:13:55.893
And if I sell stuff cheap or have offers or competitions,

257
00:13:56.373 --> 00:14:01.456
I get all the benefit from that myself personally with my name and my brand.

258
00:14:02.810 --> 00:14:06.459
And that does everything for the following year and the year after that.

259
00:14:07.682 --> 00:14:08.283
That's incredible.

260
00:14:08.403 --> 00:14:08.804
That's great,

261
00:14:08.945 --> 00:14:09.165
right?

262
00:14:10.732 --> 00:14:16.095
Let's talk a little bit about the more conventional and arable farming side of your operation.

263
00:14:16.495 --> 00:14:21.438
Because you post a lot on social media about how difficult it has been in recent years.

264
00:14:21.439 --> 00:14:23.919
And maybe you could tell us more about that.

265
00:14:24.460 --> 00:14:24.620
Yeah,

266
00:14:24.800 --> 00:14:28.182
so when I was going into my downward spiral,

267
00:14:28.422 --> 00:14:32.644
it just didn't seem like no matter how hard you work or how hard you try,

268
00:14:33.385 --> 00:14:35.106
there's something that goes wrong.

269
00:14:35.446 --> 00:14:37.467
And it only takes one thing with farming.

270
00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:43.544
For one year it was yellow virus in sugar beet.

271
00:14:43.545 --> 00:14:47.428
I think we lost £60,000 on sugar beet in one year just because,

272
00:14:48.429 --> 00:14:48.549
well,

273
00:14:49.089 --> 00:14:51.051
we didn't use the neonate treatment,

274
00:14:51.111 --> 00:14:53.133
which I'm not going to get into that subject,

275
00:14:53.173 --> 00:14:55.315
but it had a knock-on effect.

276
00:14:55.336 --> 00:14:59.780
And we didn't see that until later on in the year because you don't know whether you're going to get it or not until...

277
00:15:00.268 --> 00:15:20.960
you lift it and the crop looked fine at the time and then there was no yield and then suddenly you're 60 000 pounds down and there's nothing you can do about it and then you've got to decide what i'm going to do next year but there's not a lot of other options because you set up and you've already made your rotations and you're already setting into contracts for next year and you're just like hoping next

278
00:15:20.961 --> 00:15:27.724
year is going to be better in it and uh and then the next year um it was so wet that we couldn't plant.

279
00:15:28.624 --> 00:15:46.139
many of our crops so I think it started raining on the 1st of October when we normally start drilling and uh and we couldn't start drilling again until like the end of March which we've lost all of my winter cropping which that's the stuff that earns me the money and then the following year and and

280
00:15:46.159 --> 00:15:56.048
you're going through it through the year as well so you um you know and it's like I don't worry about stuff what's happening now I worry about what's going to happen in 12 months time and that's

281
00:15:56.748 --> 00:15:59.089
That works in your mind 24 hours a day,

282
00:15:59.489 --> 00:16:00.730
knowing that you're just going to lose money.

283
00:16:01.370 --> 00:16:01.670
And

284
00:16:02.150 --> 00:16:06.672
I think I did have my notice in from my landlord three times during COVID.

285
00:16:06.812 --> 00:16:08.833
And they didn't accept it.

286
00:16:08.853 --> 00:16:11.895
And I was getting myself more and more into debt.

287
00:16:14.656 --> 00:16:18.017
But coming from a place of survival,

288
00:16:20.198 --> 00:16:20.998
I couldn't give it up.

289
00:16:21.479 --> 00:16:22.419
And I don't think

290
00:16:22.819 --> 00:16:24.520
I couldn't give it up basically because.

291
00:16:25.056 --> 00:16:29.800
I knew I could have got a job and I got offered jobs for fairly good money and my wife was like,

292
00:16:29.820 --> 00:16:32.343
why don't you just like get a job and we'd be better off.

293
00:16:32.623 --> 00:16:34.184
And I know we'd be better off financially,

294
00:16:34.585 --> 00:16:39.649
but it would break me as a person if I knew that I hadn't done everything I could possibly do.

295
00:16:40.410 --> 00:16:41.771
And the social media as...

296
00:16:44.432 --> 00:16:46.113
That's taught me I was so uncomfortable,

297
00:16:46.673 --> 00:16:47.974
like talking in front of the camera.

298
00:16:49.295 --> 00:16:51.216
And you don't even know whether it's going to work or not.

299
00:16:51.236 --> 00:16:53.357
So there's no guarantee that anything's going to work.

300
00:16:53.937 --> 00:16:57.039
But it's taught me that you don't have to know what the future is.

301
00:16:57.079 --> 00:16:58.019
If you just carry on.

302
00:16:58.420 --> 00:17:01.381
And if I'd gone bankrupt and things had finished,

303
00:17:01.661 --> 00:17:02.542
I could have lived with that.

304
00:17:03.442 --> 00:17:04.563
But it didn't.

305
00:17:05.283 --> 00:17:08.185
And things started working.

306
00:17:08.725 --> 00:17:10.766
And now I can see like a future,

307
00:17:10.806 --> 00:17:12.707
even though the farm's not got any better.

308
00:17:12.747 --> 00:17:13.268
And I'm still...

309
00:17:13.868 --> 00:17:14.228
This year,

310
00:17:14.229 --> 00:17:18.013
we're either breaking even on wheat or losing a little bit.

311
00:17:18.574 --> 00:17:21.657
And I don't know what the sugar beet's going to do yet because we haven't lifted it yet.

312
00:17:21.677 --> 00:17:22.238
But it looks,

313
00:17:22.919 --> 00:17:25.242
it doesn't look great because it has only rained 12,

314
00:17:25.482 --> 00:17:27.424
but two times in the last six months.

315
00:17:29.106 --> 00:17:32.711
And the reports I'm getting from other people are not amazing.

316
00:17:35.064 --> 00:17:38.527
But I've got these other things on my other hand now that I'm concentrating on.

317
00:17:38.987 --> 00:17:42.069
And the more I'm telling people over social media,

318
00:17:42.529 --> 00:17:45.772
I think it's easier for me.

319
00:17:45.912 --> 00:17:46.032
So

320
00:17:46.752 --> 00:17:50.455
I did have a little bit of counseling in my worst stage.

321
00:17:50.815 --> 00:17:54.298
And I thought it was pointless and I'm not going to get anything out of it.

322
00:17:54.538 --> 00:17:56.359
But just getting it off your chest.

323
00:17:57.340 --> 00:18:15.308
talking it through with some people helps and if there's any other farmers out there feeling the same it's just to like open up you don't have to keep it all in because that's what normally happens is um i don't i don't want to put any of my problems on other people um but the more i'm getting it off my chest i'm seeing more

324
00:18:15.368 --> 00:18:26.052
things and then people are telling me things and we're trying that and and some things are working some things aren't and it just seems like um Thank you.

325
00:18:27.328 --> 00:18:30.512
There's answers out there for the problems that I've got,

326
00:18:30.552 --> 00:18:33.356
and I just need to find the people that's got the answers to tell me,

327
00:18:33.837 --> 00:18:36.680
and then we'll give that a go and keep going.

328
00:18:38.443 --> 00:18:39.083
Do you feel like...

329
00:18:39.624 --> 00:18:41.825
The problem of mental health,

330
00:18:42.206 --> 00:18:49.331
depression among farmers is something that's under discussed and that needs more attention?

331
00:18:50.251 --> 00:18:50.391
Well,

332
00:18:50.451 --> 00:18:52.232
it's been talked about a lot and

333
00:18:52.693 --> 00:18:54.454
I think it's well known in the community now.

334
00:18:54.534 --> 00:18:54.674
But

335
00:18:55.775 --> 00:19:00.798
I think it's the farmers that don't talk about it so much because they're proud.

336
00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:03.360
For me,

337
00:19:03.860 --> 00:19:05.361
I didn't want anybody else's help.

338
00:19:05.742 --> 00:19:06.722
And when we had the fire,

339
00:19:06.862 --> 00:19:09.184
I had loads of friends and people,

340
00:19:09.185 --> 00:19:09.424
even people.

341
00:19:09.424 --> 00:19:16.366
people who didn't know offered me help like tractors and machinery and stuff I didn't take it because I didn't want it it wasn't their problem

342
00:19:16.846 --> 00:19:23.508
I just wanted to sort my own problems out and that's not the answer um that and

343
00:19:24.268 --> 00:19:37.192
I wanted to like I wanted to do it when I started off my business I wanted to do it on my own and and and you can't do everything for yourself um but I've learned to accept other people's help and

344
00:19:37.760 --> 00:19:47.588
guidance and it's been a learning curve but it's very difficult and it's hard to get out of your own head sometimes.

345
00:19:48.285 --> 00:19:48.785
I imagine.

346
00:19:49.065 --> 00:19:49.565
I imagine.

347
00:19:50.066 --> 00:19:51.146
Tell me if I'm wrong,

348
00:19:51.206 --> 00:19:55.447
but it feels like farmers used to be a part of the community.

349
00:19:56.107 --> 00:19:59.488
The community was built around farms and farmers and the food they produced.

350
00:19:59.588 --> 00:20:06.210
And it feels like in the last century that has kind of changed and farmers got a lot more isolated.

351
00:20:06.690 --> 00:20:10.971
And there may be when you do have problems or you do have difficult situations,

352
00:20:10.972 --> 00:20:14.372
you can't rely as much on a tight-knit community.

353
00:20:14.973 --> 00:20:15.493
But in a way,

354
00:20:15.853 --> 00:20:16.093
by...

355
00:20:16.573 --> 00:20:34.541
using social media and creating all of these relationships with people online now you've sort of in a way rebuilt a sense of community yeah i think that's completely true um when i was growing up um it's like we didn't have the machinery we got these days and things used to break down quite a lot and uh but

356
00:20:35.501 --> 00:20:43.425
as a kid growing up i knew every single field and every single farmer of that field and there was a lot of them because there was a lot more farmers farming time.

357
00:20:43.605 --> 00:20:44.786
the same amount of land now.

358
00:20:45.686 --> 00:20:47.268
And if somebody saw somebody in trouble,

359
00:20:47.308 --> 00:20:48.008
they'd go and help them.

360
00:20:48.128 --> 00:20:49.129
And then vice versa,

361
00:20:49.449 --> 00:20:50.650
we didn't have mobile phones,

362
00:20:50.710 --> 00:20:55.353
but we didn't need them back then because somebody would be driving by and they'd just stop and help.

363
00:20:55.933 --> 00:20:59.916
And you knew that if it was going to rain and you got in trouble,

364
00:21:00.216 --> 00:21:03.239
you only got to call in to see your neighbour and they'd go and help you.

365
00:21:04.820 --> 00:21:05.980
But there are,

366
00:21:06.521 --> 00:21:06.981
like now,

367
00:21:07.161 --> 00:21:12.065
there's bigger and bigger farms which are owned by investors and other people now.

368
00:21:12.705 --> 00:21:13.386
The one next door,

369
00:21:13.406 --> 00:21:13.526
me,

370
00:21:13.646 --> 00:21:16.108
I've never even seen the oven,

371
00:21:16.268 --> 00:21:17.650
let alone talked to anybody there.

372
00:21:17.890 --> 00:21:18.190
And

373
00:21:19.852 --> 00:21:23.135
I think that's where the community base is gone.

374
00:21:23.136 --> 00:21:25.817
And there's still like the family farms out there,

375
00:21:25.877 --> 00:21:28.780
but it's not the same.

376
00:21:28.900 --> 00:21:33.144
And it is a lonely place because you spend hours and hours by yourself most of the time,

377
00:21:33.885 --> 00:21:34.505
which is all right.

378
00:21:34.525 --> 00:21:34.665
Well,

379
00:21:34.745 --> 00:21:35.706
everything's going all right.

380
00:21:35.707 --> 00:21:36.447
But when it's not,

381
00:21:37.168 --> 00:21:38.429
it's not a very good place to be in.

382
00:21:39.965 --> 00:21:40.786
So you posted a video,

383
00:21:41.586 --> 00:21:42.727
we can use that as an example,

384
00:21:42.767 --> 00:21:47.849
about sugar beets recently and how you're actually potentially losing money.

385
00:21:49.010 --> 00:21:54.653
I've just had my phone call from British Sugar asking me if I'm going to grow sugar beet or not next year.

386
00:21:55.934 --> 00:21:59.116
I asked them if they're going to pay me any more money and they said no.

387
00:22:00.577 --> 00:22:01.837
So I said no as well.

388
00:22:02.198 --> 00:22:04.019
I'm not going to grow sugar beet next year.

389
00:22:04.459 --> 00:22:06.740
I've got a 13 acre field of sugar beet here.

390
00:22:07.140 --> 00:22:08.121
It looks all right.

391
00:22:08.709 --> 00:22:12.973
And if I leave it in the ground as long as possible to get the most amount of yield off it,

392
00:22:14.754 --> 00:22:16.756
I'm still not going to make any money out of it.

393
00:22:17.156 --> 00:22:17.616
I reckon

394
00:22:18.437 --> 00:22:20.058
I could have done nothing with this field.

395
00:22:21.340 --> 00:22:23.762
I could have not spent any money on sprays,

396
00:22:23.982 --> 00:22:26.404
seed and fertilizer growing this crop.

397
00:22:26.804 --> 00:22:28.045
And I would have been better off.

398
00:22:28.866 --> 00:22:31.748
And I would still have to find the rent to pay the land.

399
00:22:32.148 --> 00:22:34.490
But I would be better off than what I'm doing this year.

400
00:22:34.771 --> 00:22:37.453
So why would I grow sugar beet next year when you're offering me...

401
00:22:38.021 --> 00:22:40.904
£4 a tonne less money than this year.

402
00:22:42.125 --> 00:22:43.587
I know this year's been bad,

403
00:22:44.188 --> 00:22:45.890
and next year's not going to be that bad,

404
00:22:45.910 --> 00:22:46.210
is it?

405
00:22:46.951 --> 00:22:48.252
But I said that last year,

406
00:22:48.913 --> 00:22:50.715
and this year's worse than last year.

407
00:22:52.637 --> 00:22:54.258
If it is better weather next year,

408
00:22:55.860 --> 00:22:58.883
I'll be able to make more money on something else.

409
00:22:58.923 --> 00:22:59.644
First question will be,

410
00:22:59.724 --> 00:23:00.305
could you explain...

411
00:23:00.585 --> 00:23:01.086
why that is,

412
00:23:01.166 --> 00:23:04.689
like maybe the economics of it and why you're actually losing money on it.

413
00:23:04.690 --> 00:23:05.890
And then second is,

414
00:23:06.451 --> 00:23:10.815
if it's so complicated to make money with these kind of crops,

415
00:23:11.456 --> 00:23:12.397
why continue doing it?

416
00:23:12.557 --> 00:23:15.500
Are you kind of locked into a system where you have to?

417
00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:16.681
What's the story?

418
00:23:17.361 --> 00:23:17.501
Yeah,

419
00:23:17.621 --> 00:23:21.224
so I can grow anything I want on this farm,

420
00:23:22.065 --> 00:23:26.468
but I need to pay the rent to Cambridge County Council as we get kicked out.

421
00:23:28.009 --> 00:23:28.710
So sugar beet,

422
00:23:29.911 --> 00:23:33.894
we agree a price 12 months in advance for the following year,

423
00:23:38.157 --> 00:23:41.580
which is fine until you don't grow enough yield in order to...

424
00:23:44.785 --> 00:24:01.101
pay the all the costs associated with it so um it say it costs x amount to grow sugar beet you divide that by by the price that you're getting paid that's your break-even point of what yield you need um but we don't know what the weather's going to do and and

425
00:24:01.902 --> 00:24:08.889
on different soil types there's good there's good soils and there's not so good soils and i've got a bit of both um

426
00:24:10.445 --> 00:24:10.785
And

427
00:24:11.826 --> 00:24:15.648
I've got a five-year average of what I know that I can grow sugar beet for,

428
00:24:15.768 --> 00:24:17.709
which is my good years and my bad years in one,

429
00:24:17.829 --> 00:24:19.010
and that's my five-year average.

430
00:24:19.370 --> 00:24:20.671
So me personally,

431
00:24:20.931 --> 00:24:24.953
I take my five-year average times that by the amount of money that they're going to pay,

432
00:24:26.134 --> 00:24:27.875
and then that will determine.

433
00:24:27.876 --> 00:24:32.157
And I already know my growing costs anyway because they usually stay the same or get a little bit more,

434
00:24:33.558 --> 00:24:38.281
depending on if nothing major has happened and we've already bought the fertilizer and everything else.

435
00:24:39.106 --> 00:24:40.808
So I know how much it's going to grow to cost,

436
00:24:41.629 --> 00:24:43.251
but I don't know how much yield I'm going to get.

437
00:24:43.832 --> 00:24:45.093
And this year specifically,

438
00:24:45.514 --> 00:24:47.757
I'd say it's rained twice in six months.

439
00:24:48.433 --> 00:24:49.434
So without rain,

440
00:24:49.734 --> 00:24:51.756
the sugar beet's not going to bulk up in size.

441
00:24:52.176 --> 00:24:54.438
And although the sugar content will probably be higher,

442
00:24:55.059 --> 00:24:57.261
which we get paid for sugar content and yield,

443
00:24:59.523 --> 00:25:00.324
it doesn't look very good.

444
00:25:00.464 --> 00:25:07.550
So I know that it's not going to be like the 24 tonnes an acre I need in order to break even.

445
00:25:08.931 --> 00:25:10.893
And we can grow up to 30 tonnes an acre.

446
00:25:10.913 --> 00:25:12.715
So if we grew 30 tonnes an acre on everything,

447
00:25:13.175 --> 00:25:13.956
we'd make a profit.

448
00:25:14.356 --> 00:25:15.337
And some farmers do that.

449
00:25:15.857 --> 00:25:16.878
So they haven't got a problem.

450
00:25:16.938 --> 00:25:20.120
But me personally on this farm with my five-year average,

451
00:25:20.440 --> 00:25:23.343
and next year they've brought out the price.

452
00:25:23.403 --> 00:25:26.605
So I post on social media what's going on at the time.

453
00:25:27.566 --> 00:25:29.027
They've reduced the price next year,

454
00:25:29.767 --> 00:25:31.469
£4 a tonne on average.

455
00:25:31.569 --> 00:25:35.432
It's a bit more complicated than that because they've got a complicated system of working it all out.

456
00:25:35.452 --> 00:25:36.192
But on average,

457
00:25:36.193 --> 00:25:36.873
it's like

458
00:25:37.273 --> 00:25:38.814
£4 a tonne less than this year.

459
00:25:39.214 --> 00:25:40.996
And it's going to cost me the same,

460
00:25:41.076 --> 00:25:42.457
if not more money to grow it.

461
00:25:43.345 --> 00:25:49.008
And my five-year average is going to go down because this year is going to be less than my five-year average.

462
00:25:50.648 --> 00:25:50.768
So

463
00:25:51.309 --> 00:25:52.869
I've just said I'm not doing it anymore.

464
00:25:53.510 --> 00:25:54.270
And for me,

465
00:25:55.030 --> 00:25:58.912
there's a breaking point in everybody and it's at what stage are people going to say no.

466
00:25:59.932 --> 00:26:01.613
But most farmers are in a position,

467
00:26:01.833 --> 00:26:02.714
that's what they've been doing,

468
00:26:03.054 --> 00:26:04.174
that's what they know what they're doing,

469
00:26:04.194 --> 00:26:05.275
that's in their rotation.

470
00:26:05.695 --> 00:26:10.117
And it is really difficult to get out of what you've been doing for like ever.

471
00:26:11.097 --> 00:26:16.200
I've seen it a little bit different because I've got some other things that have been working better for me,

472
00:26:16.980 --> 00:26:22.563
which don't rely on selling to wholesalers or monopolized businesses like Rear Sugar.

473
00:26:24.965 --> 00:26:27.666
But it still doesn't solve the problem as what am I going to grow?

474
00:26:27.806 --> 00:26:29.807
Because although like last year,

475
00:26:29.827 --> 00:26:33.249
I didn't want to grow Sugar Beet last year because I knew it was going to be tight,

476
00:26:33.489 --> 00:26:36.231
but it was bad the previous year and I thought it's not going to get worse than that,

477
00:26:36.251 --> 00:26:36.511
isn't it?

478
00:26:38.772 --> 00:26:40.633
and on the basis of

479
00:26:41.165 --> 00:26:42.125
What else am I going to grow?

480
00:26:42.365 --> 00:26:44.566
I've got quite a bit of black grass on this farm as well.

481
00:26:44.646 --> 00:26:52.548
So I do need to have some spring cropping will reduce the black grass burden than just growing all winter crops.

482
00:26:52.608 --> 00:27:01.591
Or I can't just grow winter wheat continuously as I'll get less yield from all of my wheats because you get more from your first wheats,

483
00:27:01.951 --> 00:27:03.011
not so much on your second.

484
00:27:03.012 --> 00:27:05.832
And as soon as you go into third or continuous wheats,

485
00:27:05.833 --> 00:27:09.953
then you're at risk of losing a crop in there from take all.

486
00:27:10.113 --> 00:27:10.373
side

487
00:27:10.533 --> 00:27:12.614
There's all these other problems associated with it.

488
00:27:13.095 --> 00:27:15.436
And although I've lost money in the past on sugar beet,

489
00:27:15.876 --> 00:27:19.278
it seemed the best alternative option of what I've got available.

490
00:27:19.579 --> 00:27:20.859
And the other options are,

491
00:27:21.240 --> 00:27:22.881
whether I put spring barley,

492
00:27:22.941 --> 00:27:26.263
beans or peas,

493
00:27:26.323 --> 00:27:27.623
but these other crops,

494
00:27:27.884 --> 00:27:29.965
they either get eaten a lot by pigeons,

495
00:27:31.026 --> 00:27:32.026
and in a dry year,

496
00:27:32.486 --> 00:27:33.927
they won't grow on my heavy land.

497
00:27:35.208 --> 00:27:36.349
And I know other people that...

498
00:27:36.729 --> 00:27:57.846
put spring cropping in this year and they haven't got hardly any crop at all so although it's cheaper to grow them crops they'll be losing more money than growing sugar beet because i find that sugar beet i will get a crop every year but you don't know what yield you're going to get and it costs you more money so um i

499
00:27:57.866 --> 00:28:01.348
need quite a big yield in order to break even um

500
00:28:02.173 --> 00:28:05.615
and I don't know how much we're going to lose or even if we're going to lose at all.

501
00:28:05.755 --> 00:28:07.816
I was hoping if it rains now,

502
00:28:08.096 --> 00:28:08.977
it's still quite warm,

503
00:28:09.417 --> 00:28:11.138
it can still carry on growing in the land,

504
00:28:11.558 --> 00:28:21.744
but the longer you leave it in the land you're at risk if it comes wet you can have tricky harvest in it and then there could be frost that could take out a percentage of the crop.

505
00:28:21.745 --> 00:28:29.549
We lost 200 tonne the other year because of frost and then it could mess up next year's crop as well ideally i want to get a winter crop in

506
00:28:30.265 --> 00:28:49.459
after the sugar beet so I'm leaving it in until November which is really risky on some heavy land because if it comes wet I won't be able to drill it with my winter wheat as well so um next year I've told everybody I'm not growing sugar beet and I didn't think it would be a a major issue but it has exploded quite a lot on my socials because

507
00:28:49.499 --> 00:28:56.785
people don't talk about this stuff the farmers just carry on regardless uh whether they're happy or not and some of them

508
00:28:57.853 --> 00:29:14.165
probably make decent money out of sugar beet and they should be carrying on but british sugar it's like just make no sense that we're getting paid less this year than next year than this year and it's going to cost us more to grow just based on the price of the the world sugar markets dropped

509
00:29:14.225 --> 00:29:18.128
out completely and uh and there's nothing we can do about that

510
00:29:19.385 --> 00:29:25.070
It's absolutely crazy the amount of factors and issues and things that you have to deal with as a farmer,

511
00:29:25.110 --> 00:29:25.330
right?

512
00:29:25.390 --> 00:29:31.415
And the risk you have to take because you have to make all of these decisions not knowing what the weather is going to be like or what the price is going to be like and so on.

513
00:29:33.317 --> 00:29:33.437
Yeah,

514
00:29:35.158 --> 00:29:35.799
it's just a comment.

515
00:29:35.819 --> 00:29:36.740
I guess that's not a question.

516
00:29:36.760 --> 00:29:37.260
It's just that

517
00:29:37.760 --> 00:29:47.529
I started learning about the world of farming two years ago and every day I learn something new and gain another level of respect for the hard work that farming is.

518
00:29:47.569 --> 00:29:47.969
but and

519
00:29:48.069 --> 00:29:49.349
Anybody that's been into farming,

520
00:29:49.489 --> 00:29:50.110
they're used to it.

521
00:29:50.210 --> 00:29:52.250
And it's like,

522
00:29:52.310 --> 00:29:55.551
potatoes is like the ideal example of,

523
00:29:55.771 --> 00:30:00.313
I used to hate potatoes because I used to say,

524
00:30:00.813 --> 00:30:01.793
nine out of 10 years,

525
00:30:04.574 --> 00:30:05.294
they're not all right.

526
00:30:05.654 --> 00:30:08.475
And you only need one year for it to make up for the other nine.

527
00:30:09.015 --> 00:30:09.976
And because the price,

528
00:30:10.116 --> 00:30:11.636
and there's more of supply and demand.

529
00:30:11.656 --> 00:30:12.216
So if you get,

530
00:30:12.616 --> 00:30:13.357
if you grow less,

531
00:30:13.537 --> 00:30:14.257
you get paid more.

532
00:30:14.717 --> 00:30:19.961
But we're not even in that system anymore because we're locking into something we don't even know what we're growing.

533
00:30:20.582 --> 00:30:20.702
So

534
00:30:21.142 --> 00:30:25.646
I'd even like I'd like the system to go back to like supply and demand,

535
00:30:25.927 --> 00:30:28.349
waiting to see what you've got and then sell it.

536
00:30:28.709 --> 00:30:37.056
But it doesn't make any difference anymore when you're on a world market because somebody's also grown more in another country than what we have.

537
00:30:37.456 --> 00:30:40.179
And and it just balances out on everything.

538
00:30:40.199 --> 00:30:42.040
So there's going to be losers and winners.

539
00:30:42.200 --> 00:30:42.481
And...

540
00:30:43.101 --> 00:30:43.842
It just seems like

541
00:30:44.622 --> 00:30:45.723
I'm on a losing battle.

542
00:30:46.263 --> 00:30:46.444
Yeah,

543
00:30:47.184 --> 00:30:49.346
everything you just said is super important.

544
00:30:49.646 --> 00:30:49.966
And

545
00:30:50.467 --> 00:30:51.768
I don't understand it fully.

546
00:30:51.968 --> 00:30:54.410
It'd be great if you could just go back and explain the same thing,

547
00:30:54.450 --> 00:30:58.833
but like go into more details about supply and demand and different ways of selling.

548
00:31:00.254 --> 00:31:02.856
I really hope you're enjoying this conversation so far.

549
00:31:03.396 --> 00:31:04.077
Don't go anywhere.

550
00:31:04.117 --> 00:31:09.121
We have plenty of interesting topics to cover in the second part of this episode.

551
00:31:09.757 --> 00:31:14.743
I just want to take a couple seconds of your time to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seed podcast,

552
00:31:15.183 --> 00:31:15.824
Soil Capital.

553
00:31:16.304 --> 00:31:26.435
Soil Capital is a company that accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve things like soil health and biodiversity.

554
00:31:27.276 --> 00:31:27.416
Yeah,

555
00:31:27.577 --> 00:31:31.421
so where did we get up to?

556
00:31:32.901 --> 00:31:33.301
Actually,

557
00:31:33.801 --> 00:31:36.022
because it goes back to a phrase that you said,

558
00:31:36.042 --> 00:31:38.143
and I wrote it down here from one of your recent videos,

559
00:31:38.144 --> 00:31:38.623
where you said,

560
00:31:38.683 --> 00:31:40.784
the old conventional farming system is broken.

561
00:31:40.824 --> 00:31:41.584
The more we grow,

562
00:31:41.624 --> 00:31:42.884
the less you get paid.

563
00:31:44.645 --> 00:31:44.765
So,

564
00:31:45.685 --> 00:31:46.645
I feel now is,

565
00:31:48.046 --> 00:31:48.746
the more we grow,

566
00:31:48.846 --> 00:31:49.846
the less we get paid,

567
00:31:50.847 --> 00:31:52.707
which is supply and demand,

568
00:31:53.328 --> 00:31:53.468
but

569
00:31:53.988 --> 00:31:57.369
I don't feel like we're in a supply and demand.

570
00:31:58.077 --> 00:32:15.525
pricing system so say with sugar beet and even the flowers they set the price up so they set the price now for the following year but we don't know how much crop we're going to grow so um as a farmer my money comes from how much we grow in yield and

571
00:32:15.605 --> 00:32:25.009
the price that we get paid you times that up and that will get you all of your income um for what we need the expenses what we pay on it

572
00:32:25.849 --> 00:32:43.761
pretty much known by us so we know how much how much it costs for machinery seed fertilizer and sprays within a bit the prices can go up a little bit and down they normally go up every year but they don't come down a lot but the price we get paid if

573
00:32:43.762 --> 00:32:53.588
we get paid less next year than this year we have to grow more yield in order to break even or make a profit

574
00:32:54.949 --> 00:32:56.070
and that don't happen every year.

575
00:32:56.471 --> 00:33:02.457
So we can't control the weather and the weather is the biggest thing that affects everything that we do.

576
00:33:03.138 --> 00:33:03.799
We can just,

577
00:33:04.460 --> 00:33:07.643
the only things that we control is when we do something,

578
00:33:07.723 --> 00:33:16.033
how we do it and how much we want to spend on it in order to try and maximize the yield from what we get from every field that we do

579
00:33:16.693 --> 00:33:31.704
and that's why I've been using sprays and fertilizers in order to maximize the yield and it changes from year to year so some years you've got more yield potential than others and then you can push it a little bit harder to try and get that little bit more yield but I do feel like most

580
00:33:31.744 --> 00:33:44.513
farmers are competing with each other and so we grow more food every year and then the price goes down because and that's supply and demand but you

581
00:33:44.997 --> 00:33:48.461
It's not supply and demand if we've already set our price a year in it,

582
00:33:49.041 --> 00:33:50.022
like last year.

583
00:33:50.663 --> 00:33:51.984
And it was the same with the flowers,

584
00:33:52.004 --> 00:33:52.825
so they used to pay...

585
00:33:53.989 --> 00:34:16.688
um like 33 p.m stem for peonies but we don't know how many we're going to have but we know pretty much our costs associated with it and we can get and and some crops are worse than others so like potatoes um your yield can go up and down dramatically like this year there's been no rain and although people can irrigate they're going to have less potatoes than if we get a wet year but

586
00:34:16.748 --> 00:34:17.629
then um

587
00:34:19.605 --> 00:34:20.986
That's why I packed up growing potatoes,

588
00:34:21.046 --> 00:34:25.070
because it just seemed like one out of,

589
00:34:25.430 --> 00:34:25.550
say,

590
00:34:25.650 --> 00:34:29.554
one out of five years in potatoes are good,

591
00:34:30.074 --> 00:34:32.136
but then the other four are really bad.

592
00:34:32.436 --> 00:34:35.979
But that one year can make up for all the other years put together.

593
00:34:36.319 --> 00:34:40.663
And that's what most farmers are doing now is like they know it's not very good,

594
00:34:41.003 --> 00:34:43.265
but they only need one year that's going to be good.

595
00:34:43.425 --> 00:34:46.027
And then they'll get themselves caught up.

596
00:34:46.127 --> 00:34:48.049
But that year's not come for a little while.

597
00:34:48.569 --> 00:34:48.789
Right,

598
00:34:49.269 --> 00:34:49.509
right.

599
00:34:51.650 --> 00:34:54.791
This podcast is centered around the topic of regenerative agriculture.

600
00:34:55.131 --> 00:34:57.932
And I speak to a lot of regenerative farmers,

601
00:34:58.692 --> 00:35:00.032
including just yesterday,

602
00:35:00.652 --> 00:35:01.213
James Buescher.

603
00:35:02.213 --> 00:35:03.633
And maybe

604
00:35:03.973 --> 00:35:05.294
I'm living in a bubble a little bit,

605
00:35:05.354 --> 00:35:10.535
but all of these farmers transitions from a more conventional system to something called regenerative,

606
00:35:11.175 --> 00:35:17.637
seem very pleased that they did that and that they evolved into a different way of farming with nature reducing

607
00:35:18.117 --> 00:35:21.619
use of synthetic products and so on.

608
00:35:22.679 --> 00:35:25.961
Is that something that you've looked into and considered at this stage?

609
00:35:26.601 --> 00:35:28.762
It's something that I'm looking into now.

610
00:35:29.122 --> 00:35:30.463
I've always known about it.

611
00:35:32.184 --> 00:35:34.244
But when you've got no money,

612
00:35:34.745 --> 00:35:36.225
there is no room for error.

613
00:35:36.866 --> 00:35:41.308
So a lot of the people that say that go into regenerative organic practices,

614
00:35:41.648 --> 00:35:43.969
they all say it gets worse before it gets better.

615
00:35:44.349 --> 00:35:51.644
And there's got to be a period of time where you've got to leave your land to let nature come back from what we've been doing to it,

616
00:35:52.245 --> 00:35:52.426
which

617
00:35:54.249 --> 00:35:55.833
I kind of understand.

618
00:35:57.085 --> 00:36:03.229
the reasoning behind it but i can't afford to do that because i'm paying um we pay 58

619
00:36:03.749 --> 00:36:19.140
000 pounds a year in rent every year regardless of whether we get any crop and if we're putting fields down that are not earning any money out of it um i'll go bankrupt in one year so um it has given me a little bit of hope with like

620
00:36:19.240 --> 00:36:20.901
farming my apples because

621
00:36:21.405 --> 00:36:23.866
We don't use any sprays or fertilizers in there.

622
00:36:24.146 --> 00:36:24.306
And

623
00:36:24.687 --> 00:36:25.607
25 years ago,

624
00:36:25.927 --> 00:36:26.047
my

625
00:36:26.387 --> 00:36:29.469
100-year-old orchard that came with the farm,

626
00:36:30.209 --> 00:36:34.811
it was labelled as commercially unviable and never going to make any money.

627
00:36:36.212 --> 00:36:42.415
I personally thought that the fruit was worthless and I just let it fall to the floor because I couldn't actually pick it.

628
00:36:43.535 --> 00:36:47.837
I couldn't pay the labour to pick the apples for what the money I would get for like...

629
00:36:48.233 --> 00:37:04.567
cider and juice apples even when the price was high um but last year um i tried selling them on social media as well and that and that took off as well because people are getting fed up with what

630
00:37:04.607 --> 00:37:06.729
they're getting in the supermarket and i have got

631
00:37:08.025 --> 00:37:23.436
another orchard which has got 250 different varieties of apples pears plums and cherries which are heritage varieties from the seven counties of east of england and i can give them something that they've not tasted before and it hasn't had anything added

632
00:37:23.496 --> 00:37:36.044
to it and it is just grown the way nature intended and um i don't certify it as organic i just tell people what I do on a day-to-day basis and they're paying me

633
00:37:38.497 --> 00:37:46.141
like I've sold them for a pound an apple uh which sounds ridiculous but this year um

634
00:37:47.042 --> 00:38:03.131
I've sold 30 acres of apples through the post and we've sold out just recently um and that tells me that there's a market there selling direct to the consumer and they want um they

635
00:38:03.171 --> 00:38:06.793
want what I've got at the minute and and so that made me look into

636
00:38:07.661 --> 00:38:23.537
organic practices more and i have this year i have started growing i'm trying to live off an acre for a year starting from the first of january but my rules were i'm not going to put any sprays or fertilizers on my crops and

637
00:38:23.737 --> 00:38:25.298
the seeds that I want to plant,

638
00:38:25.899 --> 00:38:32.204
I want to grow the crops that produces seeds for the following year in order to live off that.

639
00:38:33.885 --> 00:38:37.528
And that went a little bit nuts on social as well.

640
00:38:38.248 --> 00:38:44.513
And that kind of steers me into the direction of what I feel the consumer wants,

641
00:38:45.114 --> 00:38:47.395
which is more than what maybe I want.

642
00:38:48.396 --> 00:38:48.576
But

643
00:38:49.885 --> 00:39:07.350
I think there's something in it and it was only an acre and next year we've uh we've started putting some cover crops in we've done some direct drilling and I'm trying some different practices and I'm speaking to all these different people they're sending me messages every day about have you tried this or have this crop and

644
00:39:07.770 --> 00:39:18.173
I wouldn't find that anywhere else apart from what I'm doing on social media and I and it goes back to the stage of like I know the answers are out there and I'm willing to try stuff,

645
00:39:18.753 --> 00:39:19.413
but I can't.

646
00:39:19.493 --> 00:39:36.783
do it i can't put the whole farm down because i can't afford it to go wrong yeah um but if i've found out with like the other stuff that i've been doing on social media as soon as you get something that works then

647
00:39:36.823 --> 00:39:48.049
everybody will follow and it could change everything that we do um so i haven't found what works yet but when i find out i'll let you know yeah sweet but it's It's...

648
00:39:48.129 --> 00:40:03.520
great that you can start experimenting on a small piece of land already and see what works that's that's something i've heard many times as well that it's better to start small and go progressively rather than just you know bet the whole farm on a on

649
00:40:03.521 --> 00:40:16.529
a bet yeah and what what works for one year yeah don't necessarily gonna work forever or the next year because um it's like with my my 250 different varieties of apples

650
00:40:17.189 --> 00:40:18.810
It was a really wet year last year,

651
00:40:19.030 --> 00:40:25.351
and it was one of the worst disease years in orchards that you can get when it's wet.

652
00:40:26.552 --> 00:40:28.412
But some varieties have done really well.

653
00:40:29.372 --> 00:40:32.193
But they haven't done very well this year because it's had no water.

654
00:40:32.573 --> 00:40:34.574
But then other varieties have done well this year.

655
00:40:35.014 --> 00:40:44.277
So having a range of different crops instead of coming away from the monoculture of just growing wheat and sugar beet.

656
00:40:46.137 --> 00:40:50.919
feels like that's the direction that I will be concentrating some of my efforts into.

657
00:40:52.460 --> 00:40:56.441
When we look at the difference between going organic or regenerative,

658
00:40:56.481 --> 00:40:56.742
I mean,

659
00:40:56.782 --> 00:40:59.483
organic is very strict in what you can or cannot do.

660
00:41:00.163 --> 00:41:03.744
And you do hear that transition can be a little bit difficult,

661
00:41:04.325 --> 00:41:05.365
what's called a J-curve,

662
00:41:05.405 --> 00:41:05.625
right?

663
00:41:05.645 --> 00:41:06.946
That's what you were saying,

664
00:41:06.947 --> 00:41:08.607
it gets worse before it gets better.

665
00:41:09.067 --> 00:41:10.467
But with regenerative agriculture,

666
00:41:10.487 --> 00:41:13.969
there's maybe more room for progressive progress.

667
00:41:14.681 --> 00:41:17.883
And I've had several farmers tell me that actually if you do things right,

668
00:41:17.903 --> 00:41:21.205
if you get the right information or the right agronomic help or something,

669
00:41:21.385 --> 00:41:24.927
that you can actually do it without a dip or a J-curve.

670
00:41:24.928 --> 00:41:25.047
Yeah,

671
00:41:25.048 --> 00:41:25.667
I think you can do.

672
00:41:26.268 --> 00:41:26.588
And as I say,

673
00:41:26.648 --> 00:41:28.209
we've done some direct drilling this year,

674
00:41:28.469 --> 00:41:29.910
and that's gone really well,

675
00:41:29.930 --> 00:41:32.971
a lot better than this machine that we use here,

676
00:41:32.972 --> 00:41:34.872
which takes a lot of diesel and horsepower.

677
00:41:34.873 --> 00:41:38.234
And we do still plough most things,

678
00:41:38.634 --> 00:41:43.017
but I've still got in the back of my head all the knowledge and experience that...

679
00:41:43.617 --> 00:42:04.466
failed in the past because i've tried i've tried crops without plowing before and on some of my heavy land um it may work on other farms um it caps and it gets flooded and if you're only doing if you're only working the top couple of inches um i've

680
00:42:04.486 --> 00:42:11.649
got a lot of land that will get flooded and that just holds me back a little bit from trying vast areas without um

681
00:42:13.737 --> 00:42:14.357
I get it,

682
00:42:15.037 --> 00:42:16.218
of course,

683
00:42:16.219 --> 00:42:16.578
of course,

684
00:42:16.579 --> 00:42:16.758
yes.

685
00:42:18.198 --> 00:42:20.159
What would it take for you to be more,

686
00:42:20.759 --> 00:42:20.999
you know,

687
00:42:21.439 --> 00:42:24.600
ambitious in trying new methods of farming?

688
00:42:24.620 --> 00:42:26.621
Because you said right now you can't afford it,

689
00:42:26.741 --> 00:42:26.961
right?

690
00:42:27.081 --> 00:42:27.901
You can't risk it.

691
00:42:28.861 --> 00:42:30.962
But what kind of help or what kind of,

692
00:42:30.963 --> 00:42:31.742
I don't know,

693
00:42:31.942 --> 00:42:38.864
government scheme would you kind of like to see that would allow you to take a bit more risk there and go for it?

694
00:42:39.144 --> 00:42:39.284
Yeah,

695
00:42:39.464 --> 00:42:40.364
so money,

696
00:42:40.705 --> 00:42:41.185
basically.

697
00:42:41.425 --> 00:42:41.545
So...

698
00:42:42.677 --> 00:42:58.766
and and i've been chasing the money from the government and people people say like subsidies are bad but subsidies are a way of like forcing the hand on farmers because that's where they follow they follow the money um

699
00:42:59.267 --> 00:43:09.993
and i've done this by we've got we've got we've still got land in a mid-tier scheme which is an environmental scheme for my orchards and then it's paid for a bit of fencing and uh i'm putting um

700
00:43:10.861 --> 00:43:39.941
water drinkers and buffer strips and pollen nectar things so we're doing a lot of that already and i've been doing that for quite a few years but the problem is when you take it away and the same with like we've been having subsidies for the rest of the farm in order to um it started off from like stopping the grain mountains of what we've been having and then they've followed on and done something different and the general public don't like farmers getting paid money for nothing but

701
00:43:39.981 --> 00:43:40.161
it's

702
00:43:41.693 --> 00:43:43.014
But without the subsidies,

703
00:43:44.255 --> 00:43:46.716
I don't think the government's got any control of what we might do.

704
00:43:47.897 --> 00:43:49.057
And we'll just follow the money.

705
00:43:49.418 --> 00:43:54.100
So if one particular crop decides to make more money than others,

706
00:43:54.260 --> 00:43:55.581
then that's where we chase the money.

707
00:43:56.762 --> 00:44:00.344
So it's like the government control things with money,

708
00:44:00.764 --> 00:44:01.565
but without it.

709
00:44:02.769 --> 00:44:06.292
I'm not sure where things are going to go at the moment because they've took all the subsidies away.

710
00:44:06.833 --> 00:44:07.393
And at the moment,

711
00:44:07.413 --> 00:44:09.715
I'm still getting a little bit from my environmental stuff.

712
00:44:10.336 --> 00:44:12.357
But once that's gone,

713
00:44:12.358 --> 00:44:13.839
I don't know what I'm going to do with my orchards.

714
00:44:14.099 --> 00:44:15.640
Because without that subsidies,

715
00:44:15.780 --> 00:44:17.001
they would have been ripped up by now.

716
00:44:17.222 --> 00:44:19.063
And a lot of them already had done.

717
00:44:19.784 --> 00:44:20.725
And once they're gone,

718
00:44:21.185 --> 00:44:22.126
you don't get it back again.

719
00:44:23.587 --> 00:44:25.108
So what I'm trying to do now is,

720
00:44:26.069 --> 00:44:30.173
if I can start selling stuff for the amount of money that I need.

721
00:44:31.461 --> 00:44:47.109
it to be without the subsidies i'm not in nobody's control of what i'm going to do and that's where i want to steer my own ship without relying on an outdoor factor that's telling me what to do whether

722
00:44:47.189 --> 00:44:48.049
it's good things

723
00:44:48.157 --> 00:45:04.128
to be regenerative or not i want to try it with the no subsidies because it's got to stand up on its own two feet and if it doesn't then it's not going to work and if it does then everybody will do it makes sense yeah

724
00:45:04.129 --> 00:45:16.877
it's easy isn't it yeah i mean if it's already hard to to make it work without the subsidies uh try doing it without it yeah on a five-year average because there will be some good years and there will be some bad years yeah

725
00:45:17.873 --> 00:45:24.759
Can I feed one person for one year with one acre of land?

726
00:45:25.579 --> 00:45:26.780
That's what I'm going to try next year.

727
00:45:27.341 --> 00:45:28.522
I've got a spare acre here.

728
00:45:29.262 --> 00:45:34.206
I'm going to start growing stuff now to try and feed me for the entire year next year.

729
00:45:35.848 --> 00:45:36.849
I don't know if it's possible.

730
00:45:37.329 --> 00:45:43.995
But I do think it's easier to feed 100 people with 100 acres than it is to feed one with one acre.

731
00:45:44.995 --> 00:45:46.336
So I'm looking for 100 people.

732
00:45:47.273 --> 00:45:52.117
that I can feed you next year with 100 acres.

733
00:45:52.157 --> 00:45:55.060
I've got a spare 100 acres because I'm going to stop growing sugar beet.

734
00:45:55.480 --> 00:45:57.282
I've not earned any money out of sugar beet for

735
00:45:58.022 --> 00:45:58.863
God knows how long,

736
00:46:00.064 --> 00:46:01.165
and I need something else to do.

737
00:46:01.705 --> 00:46:03.947
So if I don't earn any money out of this,

738
00:46:03.948 --> 00:46:08.511
I'll be in the same position I was for the last five years.

739
00:46:10.093 --> 00:46:11.073
But if you're interested,

740
00:46:11.234 --> 00:46:12.054
send me a message,

741
00:46:12.555 --> 00:46:15.117
and I want to know what you want me to grow as well.

742
00:46:16.241 --> 00:46:20.836
I'll grow it and then I'll give it to you and let you know how much it is.

743
00:46:22.081 --> 00:46:22.942
Living off an acre,

744
00:46:23.322 --> 00:46:28.026
I thought it'd be quite easy growing crops because I'm a farmer and that's what I do.

745
00:46:28.466 --> 00:46:33.170
But we planted over 70 different crops on an acre and 90%

746
00:46:33.171 --> 00:46:36.012
of the crops failed due to pigeons,

747
00:46:36.072 --> 00:46:39.015
rabbits and things eating them and bugs and diseases.

748
00:46:39.255 --> 00:46:43.198
But the main reason this year was no rain and I didn't have any irrigation on my field either.

749
00:46:43.618 --> 00:46:46.060
So I've ended up with a limited supply of...

750
00:46:47.433 --> 00:47:05.447
wheat beans and we've yet to harvest a bit of rape and sunflowers but I don't know whether they're going to be done or not but I am trying another experiment at the moment where conventionally on the farm I grow wheat beans and oilseed rape so I've gone on an oil like

751
00:47:05.448 --> 00:47:10.871
a whole wheat field bean and oilseed rape diet and I've been on that for the last three weeks

752
00:47:11.731 --> 00:47:13.953
I've lost a stone and I feel quite good at the moment

753
00:47:14.633 --> 00:47:30.658
and i'm still quite active and i've started working out as well so on the basis of i've got to live off my acre on the first of january and i've got um i've got some wheat oats and beans and some other stuff but

754
00:47:30.659 --> 00:47:41.981
i'm not gonna people don't understand that you can grow food when it's growing what you're gonna eat in january february and march so i'm coming from a like

755
00:47:43.521 --> 00:47:45.123
I like being in survival mode.

756
00:47:45.283 --> 00:47:46.244
That's what I do best.

757
00:47:46.264 --> 00:47:49.146
And I feel like I find more answers while

758
00:47:49.507 --> 00:47:56.574
I need to find the answers because if you put yourself in a position of difficulty and it's do or die,

759
00:47:56.894 --> 00:47:59.596
then there's only one way that you can look out of it.

760
00:48:00.858 --> 00:48:03.520
And going back to like a whole food,

761
00:48:04.485 --> 00:48:28.897
diet of i'm just boiling up like wheat and beans and it's not very tasty but i am surviving on it and i want to see where that goes and i want to add to it throughout the year from everything else that i'm growing and i might even try and source stuff from other farmers in order to do that as well um i don't actually know whether it's going to be healthy for people or not but

762
00:48:29.637 --> 00:48:46.682
do feel like my diet before and where it wasn't very good anyway and the majority of people that are uh living on processed foods and stuff like that and i've not got anything against processed food but um things have gone a lot more extreme and i think the

763
00:48:46.722 --> 00:48:56.945
world's come to like make food to last as long as possible on the shelf because the the people selling the product

764
00:48:57.333 --> 00:49:17.879
don't want to lose any money and the fresh produce is not getting eaten anymore um that's just another experiment i'm doing so so if so if i understand correctly you've set yourself a challenge to live just of one acre that you've planted here on the farm so you just selected an acre and

765
00:49:17.880 --> 00:49:25.181
so you planted a few things in on there but most of it didn't work out yeah and so you only have beans a week.

766
00:49:25.541 --> 00:49:26.441
I've got some,

767
00:49:26.982 --> 00:49:27.122
yeah,

768
00:49:27.222 --> 00:49:27.742
I've got wheat,

769
00:49:28.102 --> 00:49:29.302
beans and oats.

770
00:49:29.303 --> 00:49:34.424
I've got a load of potatoes and onions and I've got a load of leafy vegetables and salads,

771
00:49:34.464 --> 00:49:36.685
which are probably not going to make it to the 1st of January.

772
00:49:37.125 --> 00:49:37.365
Right.

773
00:49:37.725 --> 00:49:38.145
And then,

774
00:49:39.986 --> 00:49:40.446
and then

775
00:49:41.307 --> 00:49:42.767
I did think I'll have a lot more stuff.

776
00:49:44.068 --> 00:49:44.448
Yeah,

777
00:49:44.548 --> 00:49:44.668
yeah.

778
00:49:44.788 --> 00:49:45.128
And then,

779
00:49:45.608 --> 00:49:45.768
but,

780
00:49:46.709 --> 00:49:47.669
and to be fair,

781
00:49:47.670 --> 00:49:47.929
it's not.

782
00:49:48.077 --> 00:50:03.345
a very good year but it highlights the fact of how vulnerable we are at growing our own stuff as even if a farmer and and most farmers are specialized in one thing so and the thing with what covid like

783
00:50:03.426 --> 00:50:16.693
taught me is like we shut down yeah we're an island and we don't produce enough food to feed ourselves we're reliant on the world to bring stuff in which is okay because we can

784
00:50:16.993 --> 00:50:36.601
buy it in cheaper but what happens if it happens again if it happens once it could happen again uh and are we going to get prepared for that at all in order to like at least be some way self-sufficient and if we lose if we lose all our farmers that want to grow like um energy

785
00:50:36.701 --> 00:50:46.645
crops because they make more money than food or or just going into environmental stuff to grow uh things for the environment it might be all right for a little while you

786
00:50:47.990 --> 00:50:52.994
But the patterns in the past of bad things happen.

787
00:50:53.274 --> 00:50:57.117
And if you're not prepared for it,

788
00:50:57.158 --> 00:50:57.318
then

789
00:50:58.379 --> 00:50:59.980
I don't think it will end up very well.

790
00:51:00.220 --> 00:51:06.005
So that's the idea with this challenge is to try and learn to be prepared for the future or to...

791
00:51:06.761 --> 00:51:23.488
sure message that actually well no no me personally i just thought that if i put um 70 different crops in i'll find out what grows on my land and i want to grow more of that so um and i'm i'm doing it kind of selfishly that uh i want to see um i

792
00:51:23.489 --> 00:51:35.753
basically want to make money out of my farm and in order to do that i've got to find the right crops which can grow on this farm year in year out and a way of doing that uh and a way of

793
00:51:37.117 --> 00:51:52.368
selling it direct to the consumer and that's that's that's all i'm doing but um if i put them in like a a kind of story or an entertaining value then um i get more people following me as well yeah

794
00:51:52.369 --> 00:52:04.897
win win well uh it must be difficult though um so you're only eating that right for a whole year you're trying to well i don't know yet i don't know how it's gonna last i did go on the potatoes and onions diet a few weeks ago and that only lasted three days you

795
00:52:05.297 --> 00:52:22.650
yeah okay and uh and i've tried this i didn't think to be fair i didn't think i'd last three weeks but um i think i could do it for quite a while um and i've got a nutritionist that's keeping an army he's getting a little bit worried about my proteins i was gonna ask about that and some other things which um um

796
00:52:22.850 --> 00:52:26.112
and i'm hoping that we could add more stuff to it as we go along so So...

797
00:52:27.849 --> 00:52:30.531
But then next year you're going to be ready to step it up.

798
00:52:31.071 --> 00:52:31.692
Well,

799
00:52:31.693 --> 00:52:31.812
yeah,

800
00:52:31.813 --> 00:52:32.172
next year,

801
00:52:32.532 --> 00:52:33.313
the 1st of January,

802
00:52:33.314 --> 00:52:34.013
I'll need a new challenge,

803
00:52:34.034 --> 00:52:34.454
don't I say?

804
00:52:34.834 --> 00:52:35.655
Yeah,

805
00:52:36.035 --> 00:52:36.255
okay.

806
00:52:36.575 --> 00:52:36.695
Okay,

807
00:52:36.696 --> 00:52:38.136
maybe some chickens to have some eggs,

808
00:52:38.357 --> 00:52:38.877
things like that,

809
00:52:38.957 --> 00:52:41.719
or a mixed farming system.

810
00:52:42.500 --> 00:52:42.1000
And everybody,

811
00:52:43.001 --> 00:52:44.921
they like the mixed farming,

812
00:52:44.922 --> 00:52:49.164
but I say my dad used to keep pigs,

813
00:52:49.545 --> 00:52:51.866
and although I've got two pigs,

814
00:52:52.207 --> 00:52:54.768
and we've got a few sheep that are not going to be ready until like April,

815
00:52:54.829 --> 00:52:55.029
May.

816
00:52:55.529 --> 00:52:56.549
And we've got a few chickens.

817
00:52:58.270 --> 00:53:00.730
I've not been a very good livestock person.

818
00:53:00.830 --> 00:53:05.692
I had asthma and allergies when I was little and I wasn't allowed to go in the buildings on the intensive places.

819
00:53:05.712 --> 00:53:07.752
So it's the crops where

820
00:53:09.573 --> 00:53:10.473
I feel more natural.

821
00:53:11.173 --> 00:53:11.293
Yeah,

822
00:53:11.413 --> 00:53:11.613
okay,

823
00:53:11.693 --> 00:53:12.053
fair enough.

824
00:53:13.654 --> 00:53:15.494
You mentioned the orchard.

825
00:53:15.514 --> 00:53:16.895
We spoke about it a little bit,

826
00:53:16.935 --> 00:53:21.516
but there's one of the videos you posted also recently that I wanted to discuss.

827
00:53:21.536 --> 00:53:25.117
is the fact you said you decided not to...

828
00:53:25.217 --> 00:53:40.821
to certify organic your apples even though you are organic i can't sell my apples as organic because i don't pay 600 pound a year to get them certified but i don't use any sprays or fertilizers so

829
00:53:40.841 --> 00:53:52.605
if you want some apples that haven't had any sprays and fertilizers but are not organic i'll sell them on my website in boxes of 20

830
00:53:54.233 --> 00:54:11.927
all one variety but these are from 250 different varieties of apples from the east of England this one is Histon Favourite it's a pale yellow skinned with a pink flush might have some pink stripes on as well tasty

831
00:54:11.987 --> 00:54:13.528
dessert apple from cambridgeshire

832
00:54:17.837 --> 00:54:18.638
I used to be organic.

833
00:54:19.018 --> 00:54:20.999
So when I took the orchards on,

834
00:54:22.119 --> 00:54:28.782
I said we had some funding to restore the old orchards back into their original habitat,

835
00:54:28.842 --> 00:54:29.362
which we did.

836
00:54:29.962 --> 00:54:34.464
And we undergrazed it with sheep and they are organic.

837
00:54:34.524 --> 00:54:38.146
But I went through the whole certification process with organic farmers and growers,

838
00:54:38.566 --> 00:54:42.468
paid my fees and tried to sell the apples as organic.

839
00:54:44.709 --> 00:54:45.629
But some years...

840
00:54:45.950 --> 00:54:47.181
they crop better than others.

841
00:54:47.726 --> 00:54:47.847
So,

842
00:54:48.277 --> 00:54:49.418
It's all right while there's,

843
00:54:50.079 --> 00:54:50.819
what normally happens,

844
00:54:50.839 --> 00:54:52.861
the same principle is the more I grow,

845
00:54:53.582 --> 00:54:54.343
the less I get paid.

846
00:54:54.344 --> 00:54:55.584
So if I've got a lot of apples,

847
00:54:56.024 --> 00:55:00.408
there's a lot of apples out there and then the price goes down and then it's not worth picking.

848
00:55:01.709 --> 00:55:03.090
In the years where there's no apples,

849
00:55:03.891 --> 00:55:04.692
the price goes up,

850
00:55:04.932 --> 00:55:05.813
but I've got no apples.

851
00:55:06.513 --> 00:55:08.515
So the system,

852
00:55:09.616 --> 00:55:10.457
it didn't work for me.

853
00:55:11.149 --> 00:55:26.021
I hung on probably a little bit too long and I used to make juice and cider and myself and I wasn't very good at selling it back then I probably it probably worked better now but um I had to pay the subscription fees fees every year and um

854
00:55:26.341 --> 00:55:40.173
I kind of resented it a little bit because uh I didn't do anything with it and they used to come round and then they say well what what did you do I said well I do nothing yeah I don't spray anything I don't put any fertilizers on it.

855
00:55:40.813 --> 00:55:44.356
And then there was restrictions on the livestock as well.

856
00:55:44.416 --> 00:55:46.358
So we were only allowed to put the livestock on there for,

857
00:55:46.359 --> 00:55:46.518
I think,

858
00:55:46.519 --> 00:55:47.959
120 days of the year.

859
00:55:48.680 --> 00:55:54.624
But I did bring in sheep from other places because we needed more sheep than what we wanted ourself.

860
00:55:54.725 --> 00:56:00.389
And then we got nowhere to put the sheep after the 120 days of grazing.

861
00:56:00.769 --> 00:56:02.411
And it didn't work the system very well.

862
00:56:02.471 --> 00:56:05.113
So we did pull out of it after a period of time.

863
00:56:05.114 --> 00:56:08.636
And then I let the fruit just drop on the floor for a few years until...

864
00:56:10.761 --> 00:56:12.482
I went back to selling on social media.

865
00:56:12.702 --> 00:56:15.062
And then last year,

866
00:56:15.082 --> 00:56:15.822
I made that post.

867
00:56:16.783 --> 00:56:16.923
Yeah,

868
00:56:16.924 --> 00:56:19.803
I don't sell my apples as organic because I don't pay £600 a year.

869
00:56:20.404 --> 00:56:22.224
But I don't use any sprays or fertilizers.

870
00:56:22.984 --> 00:56:23.104
And

871
00:56:23.765 --> 00:56:26.925
I think it kind of went nuts because that is the system that we're in,

872
00:56:27.626 --> 00:56:32.007
that we're getting certified and we have to pay for these certifications.

873
00:56:32.127 --> 00:56:35.128
It's not the £600 that I'm worried about.

874
00:56:35.228 --> 00:56:40.149
It's all the stuff that I have to do before the certification in order to

875
00:56:40.269 --> 00:56:55.918
prove that i'm doing what i say that i'm doing and and people say that you should just pay the money it's not a lot of money but when you're not making anything out of it anyway it's a lot of money yeah um and and

876
00:56:56.178 --> 00:57:06.605
this year um i've been selling apples for a pound each which is more money than what you're ever gonna pay an organic apple so i'm selling you

877
00:57:07.245 --> 00:57:27.482
my apples and they're saying like if you paid your fee how much more would you get paid well i wouldn't because i'm getting paid more than everybody else anyway even already in the whole of the uk and there's more people i can't i ain't got enough apples for them and i'm not going to get another orchard like that because it's i've only got one um

878
00:57:27.662 --> 00:57:36.089
and and the people and that's the power of the the social media is they're not just buying apples they're buying me and

879
00:57:36.469 --> 00:57:43.337
who I am as a person and whether they believe me or not that I've sprayed them or not most of them

880
00:57:44.239 --> 00:57:55.853
I do get comments every day because we we do have problems with our apples there are a few bugs in some and I get people messaging me and saying there was four of my apples had bugs in but I know you don't spray

881
00:57:56.741 --> 00:58:13.070
yeah and and and they just open the box and they say i know they're organic because you can see they're all yeah they're not they're not all the same they're not all perfect they're not all man made to be this perception of what food is and

882
00:58:13.410 --> 00:58:25.557
food isn't like that it doesn't grow perfectly in the same size and have exactly the same taste and i think that's what we've lost is we've lost some of the flavours that

883
00:58:26.833 --> 00:58:42.962
are in some of these other varieties of apples and they've only been lost because they either bruise too easily or don't keep very well or they've got a problem along the supply chain that the middleman or the wholesaler doesn't like because they

884
00:58:43.002 --> 00:58:55.169
won't be able to sell it i i don't think people understand how insane that is because we're so used to the way things are right it's been like that for for ages but the fact that

885
00:58:55.833 --> 00:59:12.065
organic growers have to go through all of these hoops and pay these extra fees to prove that they are organic and then put on a label on the product to say this is you know organic yeah and no one seems to realize that it well in

886
00:59:12.066 --> 00:59:16.549
a normal world in a healthy world it should be the exact opposite it should be that every product that

887
00:59:16.849 --> 00:59:18.289
It's been grown with harmful chemicals.

888
00:59:18.369 --> 00:59:20.250
Get up the list of all the sprays that it's been sprayed on.

889
00:59:20.510 --> 00:59:21.210
On the packaging,

890
00:59:21.310 --> 00:59:22.851
or like a little label saying,

891
00:59:22.891 --> 00:59:24.571
this has been made with harmful chemicals.

892
00:59:24.691 --> 00:59:25.651
You choose to buy it.

893
00:59:26.572 --> 00:59:28.112
We have it on our spray cans.

894
00:59:28.212 --> 00:59:29.492
And if it doesn't have that label,

895
00:59:29.493 --> 00:59:31.433
it just means that it's organic.

896
00:59:31.434 --> 00:59:35.314
You don't have to prove anything if you're organic.

897
00:59:36.794 --> 00:59:39.355
You're forced legally to disclose if you're not.

898
00:59:39.835 --> 00:59:40.075
I mean,

899
00:59:40.115 --> 00:59:43.156
that would be a normal thing to do,

900
00:59:43.296 --> 00:59:43.676
I think.

901
00:59:43.896 --> 00:59:45.757
But we're so used to the current system now.

902
00:59:45.997 --> 00:59:46.357
I know.

903
00:59:46.658 --> 00:59:48.029
And I've got the answer's

904
00:59:48.649 --> 00:59:55.613
Because I don't disagree with the certifications because you do need traceability and you can't trust everybody out there.

905
00:59:56.193 --> 00:59:57.474
And some people don't trust me.

906
00:59:59.235 --> 00:59:59.615
And they say,

907
00:59:59.735 --> 00:59:59.995
well,

908
00:59:59.996 --> 01:00:00.696
how can you not?

909
01:00:02.037 --> 01:00:02.937
Why should I trust you?

910
01:00:03.237 --> 01:00:05.078
Because you ain't got a certificate.

911
01:00:07.139 --> 01:00:07.780
But it's like,

912
01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:09.220
if somebody's not trustworthy,

913
01:00:09.641 --> 01:00:13.643
how do you trust somebody with a certificate that hasn't done what they're supposed to be done?

914
01:00:14.343 --> 01:00:17.185
And you could go on forever.

915
01:00:18.533 --> 01:00:19.053
Something else

916
01:00:19.494 --> 01:00:21.175
I noticed on that post,

917
01:00:21.176 --> 01:00:26.578
you sort of wrote down the maths of how much you sell your apples for,

918
01:00:27.299 --> 01:00:28.840
how much the packaging costs,

919
01:00:29.840 --> 01:00:31.101
the labor costs and all of that.

920
01:00:31.241 --> 01:00:31.441
Right.

921
01:00:32.021 --> 01:00:34.643
And I noticed that the packaging cost actually,

922
01:00:34.883 --> 01:00:35.504
not the packaging,

923
01:00:35.505 --> 01:00:40.567
but the shipping cost is actually a huge part of your cost.

924
01:00:40.707 --> 01:00:40.927
Right.

925
01:00:42.828 --> 01:00:43.589
And it made me think.

926
01:00:44.469 --> 01:00:47.531
Does that go quite far and you have to package it all across the UK?

927
01:00:47.872 --> 01:00:49.953
And the second part of that question is,

928
01:00:51.314 --> 01:00:53.936
are you sort of trying to connect with local markets?

929
01:00:53.976 --> 01:01:03.002
Have you thought about creating an on-farm shop or trying to find a way to connect directly face-to-face with customers more?

930
01:01:03.222 --> 01:01:03.703
Yeah.

931
01:01:03.943 --> 01:01:04.063
So

932
01:01:06.244 --> 01:01:10.687
I live in Whiz Beach and Whiz Beach grows a lot of produce.

933
01:01:11.548 --> 01:01:11.988
locally.

934
01:01:13.677 --> 01:01:14.478
I can't sell anything,

935
01:01:15.158 --> 01:01:15.679
I don't think,

936
01:01:15.739 --> 01:01:18.801
because there's somebody cheaper and better and next door.

937
01:01:20.323 --> 01:01:20.443
So

938
01:01:20.903 --> 01:01:21.464
I've found with,

939
01:01:21.864 --> 01:01:23.245
especially like the flowers,

940
01:01:25.607 --> 01:01:26.768
I don't sell anything locally.

941
01:01:27.929 --> 01:01:30.931
And it's easier for me not to have a shop because I don't have to run it.

942
01:01:31.472 --> 01:01:33.894
And we do everything through Royal Mail at the moment,

943
01:01:34.154 --> 01:01:35.115
which is quite expensive.

944
01:01:35.116 --> 01:01:38.037
And there's other companies that I could use that are cheaper and they've contacted me.

945
01:01:38.137 --> 01:01:38.278
But

946
01:01:39.839 --> 01:01:41.580
I like what we're doing.

947
01:01:42.605 --> 01:01:44.566
And I send everything track

948
01:01:45.026 --> 01:01:46.447
24 first class,

949
01:01:46.547 --> 01:01:48.067
which is the most expensive one,

950
01:01:48.848 --> 01:01:52.509
because I need you to have it as fresh as physically possible.

951
01:01:53.870 --> 01:01:54.470
And if it's not,

952
01:01:54.490 --> 01:01:55.270
I'll send you another box.

953
01:01:56.951 --> 01:02:03.153
So posting packages is a massive expense for me in all of my direct sales,

954
01:02:03.894 --> 01:02:05.174
but they can go anywhere in the UK.

955
01:02:06.675 --> 01:02:09.016
So suddenly I've gone from a local market,

956
01:02:09.496 --> 01:02:11.457
which I can't sell anything for any money,

957
01:02:12.137 --> 01:02:17.058
to a massive market that I could sell everything within hours.

958
01:02:17.479 --> 01:02:19.139
And that's what we seem to do now is like,

959
01:02:19.239 --> 01:02:19.999
I put stuff up.

960
01:02:20.899 --> 01:02:22.380
I haven't got anything for sale anymore.

961
01:02:22.420 --> 01:02:23.460
We've sold out of apples.

962
01:02:24.340 --> 01:02:27.181
I've sold out of subscription packages for my flowers for next year.

963
01:02:27.721 --> 01:02:30.242
And I sold out of Christmas trees last year.

964
01:02:30.462 --> 01:02:32.423
And I've got loads of people because we sold,

965
01:02:33.223 --> 01:02:40.325
we sold thousands of boxes of foliage boxes of Christmas trees that we cut up all of my Christmas trees.

966
01:02:40.893 --> 01:02:58.045
and sold them in foliage boxes last year and i sold them in two weeks and it turned into it turns into more of a game because i don't know how else to deal with it you can't control social media but what i found is um years

967
01:02:58.065 --> 01:03:09.493
ago i used to hold myself back because i thought um what if we sell too many but that's not my problem anymore because we do sell too many and the same with my apples this year um and

968
01:03:11.145 --> 01:03:11.945
For 90%

969
01:03:11.946 --> 01:03:12.565
of the time,

970
01:03:13.426 --> 01:03:17.607
we've got sold out on the website until the next variety is coming.

971
01:03:17.787 --> 01:03:18.947
And I get loads of people messaging me,

972
01:03:18.948 --> 01:03:19.627
when is it coming?

973
01:03:19.628 --> 01:03:20.268
When are they coming?

974
01:03:20.528 --> 01:03:22.008
But I don't know when they're coming.

975
01:03:22.009 --> 01:03:22.988
We just pick them when they're ready.

976
01:03:23.428 --> 01:03:24.309
Then when we've picked them,

977
01:03:24.310 --> 01:03:25.009
we put them online.

978
01:03:25.469 --> 01:03:26.389
And we know what we've got.

979
01:03:26.409 --> 01:03:29.290
And if I can sell stuff before I've actually picked it,

980
01:03:30.790 --> 01:03:32.191
that's so easy in my eyes.

981
01:03:32.871 --> 01:03:33.731
So the packaging,

982
01:03:34.351 --> 01:03:36.792
the packaging is the best cost that I could pay.

983
01:03:37.352 --> 01:03:37.892
Because

984
01:03:38.393 --> 01:03:39.813
I wouldn't be able to send them.

985
01:03:40.485 --> 01:03:57.759
anywhere in the uk and i wouldn't have that market um and if i want to put my prices up i can do at the moment i feel like that's where they need to be and i could put my prices up for my apples i'm selling them for a pound each now and i think i could probably get more money for them and still sell them um

986
01:03:58.100 --> 01:04:09.129
but there are a moral opportunity of like how far do you go it i'd rather grow more stuff on the rest of my farm and keep my people happy on what they're getting paid okay Yeah.

987
01:04:10.818 --> 01:04:11.698
For what it's worth,

988
01:04:12.299 --> 01:04:13.460
two ideas that come to mind.

989
01:04:13.600 --> 01:04:13.900
One is,

990
01:04:14.181 --> 01:04:17.083
so the other big part of the expense is the labor costs,

991
01:04:17.283 --> 01:04:19.045
and that was picking and packaging,

992
01:04:20.927 --> 01:04:21.207
mostly.

993
01:04:21.527 --> 01:04:21.647
Yeah,

994
01:04:21.648 --> 01:04:21.767
yeah.

995
01:04:21.907 --> 01:04:23.429
Do you need to prune the trees as well?

996
01:04:23.629 --> 01:04:24.009
Yeah,

997
01:04:24.010 --> 01:04:25.230
yeah.

998
01:04:27.132 --> 01:04:30.535
Now that you have such a big community of people following you on social media,

999
01:04:31.155 --> 01:04:31.816
a lot of people,

1000
01:04:32.076 --> 01:04:32.316
you know,

1001
01:04:32.517 --> 01:04:32.657
they...

1002
01:04:33.177 --> 01:04:48.049
want to be involved they they want to be a part of a community you know if you organize the community day um when you need to pick the apples and get people to come and help you for a day or two i'm sure lots of people would come i think they would do yeah um

1003
01:04:48.770 --> 01:04:49.751
I have worked with,

1004
01:04:49.752 --> 01:04:54.496
I've done a volunteer woodland planting once and organised that.

1005
01:04:54.536 --> 01:05:01.904
And my main problem with volunteers is they want to talk.

1006
01:05:03.386 --> 01:05:04.167
They don't want to work.

1007
01:05:05.248 --> 01:05:07.430
And I am coming from a business point of view that

1008
01:05:08.411 --> 01:05:09.633
I want to know what my costs are.

1009
01:05:10.257 --> 01:05:11.358
And then I want to be able to do it.

1010
01:05:11.698 --> 01:05:16.681
And the thing with volunteers is they might not be so predictable about when you do need them and when you don't.

1011
01:05:17.302 --> 01:05:19.263
And the same with the flowers.

1012
01:05:19.423 --> 01:05:21.024
If I've got three days to pick flowers,

1013
01:05:21.764 --> 01:05:22.305
to pick 80%

1014
01:05:22.605 --> 01:05:23.125
of the crop,

1015
01:05:23.826 --> 01:05:26.628
I need people to be there to work.

1016
01:05:29.225 --> 01:05:31.447
A lot of people don't last a day picking flowers,

1017
01:05:32.047 --> 01:05:33.608
let alone keep coming in.

1018
01:05:35.569 --> 01:05:38.311
And it possibly could work,

1019
01:05:38.351 --> 01:05:44.095
but I do feel like it might create more headaches and I could lose more out of it than not getting things.

1020
01:05:44.115 --> 01:05:59.785
at the right time okay maybe something worse yeah given it i would like to try just limited amount of people with set rules saying okay we we're going to have a nice uh you know coffee together to chat and then we work the whole day then a nice dinner together but when we work we work yeah something i've

1021
01:05:59.825 --> 01:06:10.632
got i've got lists on my phone as well so when something when something takes off i've got lists of like i've got a column in my note for helpers and there's like hundreds of people that have said,

1022
01:06:11.332 --> 01:06:12.013
I'll be willing to do...

1023
01:06:12.813 --> 01:06:27.843
day's works for you for nothing um and i think people just want to they want to know what it's like and just they don't have the physical work that i've had and that's that's the weird thing for me is like why do people want to do what i'm doing because it's

1024
01:06:27.923 --> 01:06:36.569
not brilliant a lot of the time but i think a lot of people you know we're completely disconnected from the earth and from where the food comes from and we live in cities and we have

1025
01:06:36.769 --> 01:06:55.502
jobs behind a computer and we crave you know yeah coming back to the country somewhere yeah being being a farmer is a different story you know um and also it's difficult to access land and you don't when you don't have uh the budget for it when you don't have any experience when you don't come from a farming family so it's difficult to actually become a farmer but uh

1026
01:06:55.503 --> 01:07:06.389
yeah on the weekend from time to time being able to come on a farm and and put your hands on the ground and something physical i think a lot of people yeah and i thought the main problem we're gonna have is weed so if anybody wants to come

1027
01:07:06.981 --> 01:07:22.685
weeding for the day then uh yeah i think i could find them a job yeah and then you're going to create a community as well you know you meet people face to face there's something nice about that as well second uh sort of idea that i came to mind was um when you're transforming

1028
01:07:22.745 --> 01:07:35.669
products you can create a bigger margin you're selling you know apples raw raw apples um you said that you used to like make juices and other products but maybe now that you have this direct uh

1029
01:07:36.861 --> 01:07:38.062
point of contact to customers,

1030
01:07:39.343 --> 01:07:42.344
transforming your products and selling them to customers.

1031
01:07:42.384 --> 01:07:42.645
Plus,

1032
01:07:43.345 --> 01:07:44.446
they can keep for longer as well.

1033
01:07:44.726 --> 01:07:44.846
Yeah,

1034
01:07:44.906 --> 01:07:45.026
yeah.

1035
01:07:45.306 --> 01:07:45.426
Well,

1036
01:07:45.566 --> 01:07:46.787
the idea of the juice was

1037
01:07:47.968 --> 01:07:50.529
I couldn't sell my apples for more money back when I was organic.

1038
01:07:51.870 --> 01:07:51.990
So

1039
01:07:52.371 --> 01:07:55.653
I started making juice and it went okay.

1040
01:07:56.193 --> 01:08:01.236
But the margins were still really small and you've done a lot more work for it.

1041
01:08:01.596 --> 01:08:02.357
Although you could keep...

1042
01:08:02.965 --> 01:08:05.246
The produce wouldn't go off until like a year.

1043
01:08:05.826 --> 01:08:09.868
So you've got a longer span to sell it in.

1044
01:08:10.489 --> 01:08:12.670
But from the point of view from now,

1045
01:08:12.730 --> 01:08:14.511
I'm selling my apples for a pound each.

1046
01:08:15.851 --> 01:08:19.093
I'm making all the money on the day that they're picked.

1047
01:08:19.633 --> 01:08:23.555
So we try and ship everything on the day that they're picked to get them as fresh as possible as well.

1048
01:08:24.055 --> 01:08:24.675
And then they're gone.

1049
01:08:25.416 --> 01:08:26.516
And the same with my flowers.

1050
01:08:27.036 --> 01:08:27.757
If I can like...

1051
01:08:28.313 --> 01:08:43.242
not keep them because people dry flowers and if i've got any we do have a lot spare and we i've been selling them to people that's going to dry them and i could do it myself but it's another thing but it just seems like now the

1052
01:08:44.002 --> 01:08:47.805
the best money is in when it's at its best get it gone

1053
01:08:48.425 --> 01:09:05.254
for half decent money um but saying that we have i have um just bought a flour mill um in order to try and process some wheat into flour um so watch that space exciting a lot's happening actually now yeah yeah um we

1054
01:09:06.335 --> 01:09:14.059
we've been on the road for a week or so now here in england and i'm recording one episode every day.

1055
01:09:14.899 --> 01:09:15.279
And

1056
01:09:15.700 --> 01:09:18.241
I thought it'd be fun to ask everyone.

1057
01:09:18.241 --> 01:09:30.664
every guest to come up with a question for the next one and yesterday we were talking to a farmer regenerative farmer about an hour from here in Suffolk called James

1058
01:09:31.084 --> 01:09:48.049
Busher and the question he had for you was that's a big one what's your prediction for the future of farming and you'd say in the next maybe 10 years do you see this trend of having less and less and less farmers continuing or do you imagine something different?

1059
01:09:48.069 --> 01:10:03.841
trend for the future of farming here in the uk so whether it'll happen or not so what i believe is i don't think we don't need the supermarkets anymore um people are buying more and more stuff direct

1060
01:10:03.842 --> 01:10:13.909
to their house being delivered to their house so what i want but now's the time for farmers to get in on this so if the farmers Thank you.

1061
01:10:14.109 --> 01:10:29.142
prepared to put a bit more work and effort into it or work with somebody that do i think selling direct to the consumer in order to make um it more accessible for anybody to buy anything

1062
01:10:29.582 --> 01:10:36.488
from any farmer anywhere in the uk and get delivered to the door the very next day we can cut everybody else out

1063
01:10:38.029 --> 01:10:40.151
Do you think that works as a systemic solution though?

1064
01:10:40.152 --> 01:10:42.633
Because like from an individual perspective,

1065
01:10:42.634 --> 01:10:51.240
a farmer like you can do great now on social media and create this network and sell your products at a premium because people are willing to pay for it because they know who you are,

1066
01:10:51.241 --> 01:10:51.941
they know how you work,

1067
01:10:51.961 --> 01:10:52.941
they trust you and so on.

1068
01:10:53.001 --> 01:10:55.263
But would that work for every farmer in the UK?

1069
01:10:56.144 --> 01:10:56.584
I don't know,

1070
01:10:56.704 --> 01:10:58.546
but the systems are already in place.

1071
01:10:58.666 --> 01:11:01.829
So the systems of like processing and packaging,

1072
01:11:02.409 --> 01:11:06.052
say meat and dairy or like wheat or flour or anything like that,

1073
01:11:06.092 --> 01:11:07.093
they're already in place.

1074
01:11:09.914 --> 01:11:14.357
why does it need to sit on a shelf for a week or more for people to go and buy it?

1075
01:11:14.818 --> 01:11:21.222
It could be in distribution centres and it could be done on a bigger scale.

1076
01:11:21.223 --> 01:11:21.863
And I don't know,

1077
01:11:21.864 --> 01:11:22.943
I'm not the person to do it,

1078
01:11:23.264 --> 01:11:28.367
but I could see that we could keep the price the same of what the consumer's paying,

1079
01:11:28.847 --> 01:11:36.893
but transfer where some of the money's going back into the farmer's pocket without some of the other people making a lot of money out of the middle.

1080
01:11:37.317 --> 01:11:39.779
If you enjoy listening to the Deep Seat podcast,

1081
01:11:40.019 --> 01:11:41.820
please support me and my work.

1082
01:11:42.040 --> 01:11:47.424
You can do that in just five seconds by clicking on the like button down here at the bottom of your screen.

1083
01:11:47.904 --> 01:11:49.025
On the subscribe button,

1084
01:11:49.125 --> 01:11:50.286
that's even better.

1085
01:11:50.906 --> 01:11:51.687
And if you'd like,

1086
01:11:51.688 --> 01:11:54.589
you can also leave a comment in the comment section.

1087
01:11:55.289 --> 01:11:59.712
You can also ask me or David a question and we'll do our best to get back to you with an answer.

1088
01:12:00.513 --> 01:12:06.417
This actually makes a huge difference to stimulate the algorithms and help showing these amazing conversations to more and more.

1089
01:12:06.813 --> 01:12:07.733
People around the world,

1090
01:12:08.193 --> 01:12:09.554
thank you so much in advance.

1091
01:12:10.394 --> 01:12:10.514
Well,

1092
01:12:10.554 --> 01:12:12.074
let's get back to the end of the conversation.

1093
01:12:13.635 --> 01:12:16.196
So tomorrow we are going to visit

1094
01:12:16.716 --> 01:12:20.537
Professor Syed Azam Ali in Loughborough.

1095
01:12:20.538 --> 01:12:21.657
Am I pronouncing that correctly?

1096
01:12:21.837 --> 01:12:21.977
Yeah,

1097
01:12:21.978 --> 01:12:22.817
that's pretty good.

1098
01:12:22.818 --> 01:12:24.778
Yeah,

1099
01:12:24.918 --> 01:12:25.238
right.

1100
01:12:25.318 --> 01:12:26.098
He's a professor.

1101
01:12:26.278 --> 01:12:27.359
He studies many things,

1102
01:12:27.759 --> 01:12:32.560
but including topics like forgotten crops and things like that.

1103
01:12:32.580 --> 01:12:36.181
So do you have any questions that you might want to ask him?

1104
01:12:39.859 --> 01:12:52.284
um i'm currently living off wheat beans and oilseed rape what three things would he live on if he could choose just three things to

1105
01:12:52.324 --> 01:12:54.985
try and survive for a year that's a great question

1106
01:12:55.870 --> 01:12:56.671
That's a great question.

1107
01:12:56.672 --> 01:12:58.032
I don't know whether we want to answer that.

1108
01:12:58.272 --> 01:12:58.892
Yeah,

1109
01:12:58.893 --> 01:12:58.972
yeah.

1110
01:12:58.973 --> 01:13:06.137
I'll have a think on the way back from this interview and try and figure out what I'd eat if I was on the meetings.

1111
01:13:06.357 --> 01:13:06.737
Yeah,

1112
01:13:06.757 --> 01:13:07.358
what would you eat?

1113
01:13:07.998 --> 01:13:08.118
Well,

1114
01:13:08.119 --> 01:13:09.259
the first thing that comes to mind,

1115
01:13:09.299 --> 01:13:09.539
right,

1116
01:13:09.759 --> 01:13:12.421
is because you heard of the Three Sisters?

1117
01:13:12.801 --> 01:13:13.042
Yeah,

1118
01:13:13.043 --> 01:13:13.362
yeah.

1119
01:13:13.363 --> 01:13:14.463
The Milpa is this famous…

1120
01:13:15.183 --> 01:13:15.443
Corn,

1121
01:13:15.623 --> 01:13:16.184
beans and…

1122
01:13:17.865 --> 01:13:18.245
And squash.

1123
01:13:18.325 --> 01:13:18.665
And squash,

1124
01:13:18.666 --> 01:13:18.806
yeah.

1125
01:13:18.807 --> 01:13:18.926
Yeah,

1126
01:13:19.086 --> 01:13:20.126
yeah.

1127
01:13:20.127 --> 01:13:24.669
And they're famous for being very complementary in terms of farming.

1128
01:13:24.890 --> 01:13:25.130
Yeah,

1129
01:13:25.131 --> 01:13:25.250
yeah.

1130
01:13:25.330 --> 01:13:25.450
Take.

1131
01:13:25.490 --> 01:13:42.435
kind of complete each other in many ways but also nutritionally i've heard that they also work really well they they give you like a complete diet yeah i'll have to try that one as well i think yeah yeah if there's like maybe one important message that you like to share with people what would you pick

1132
01:13:44.175 --> 01:13:53.858
um my main message is i didn't used to have a lot of imagination because if i couldn't see it it wasn't going to happen

1133
01:13:54.878 --> 01:13:55.539
But although

1134
01:13:56.660 --> 01:14:00.103
I don't know where the future comes or where the future is going,

1135
01:14:01.324 --> 01:14:05.649
I am finding a bit of hope that things will change.

1136
01:14:05.849 --> 01:14:06.669
They will get better.

1137
01:14:07.270 --> 01:14:10.113
And if you can just imagine a better future,

1138
01:14:11.094 --> 01:14:12.495
then it could become reality.

1139
01:14:14.157 --> 01:14:14.477
Beautiful.

1140
01:14:15.478 --> 01:14:17.179
Perfect way to conclude this interview.

1141
01:14:17.439 --> 01:14:19.140
Thank you so much for taking the time,

1142
01:14:19.160 --> 01:14:19.741
especially on a

1143
01:14:20.501 --> 01:14:21.222
Sunday morning.

1144
01:14:21.722 --> 01:14:22.923
I know you must be very busy,

1145
01:14:22.983 --> 01:14:24.264
so I really appreciate that.

1146
01:14:24.644 --> 01:14:25.084
You're welcome.

1147
01:14:25.684 --> 01:14:26.185
Thanks for coming.