As the ex manager of Nocton Heath farm the events of this week sort of set out the changes in UK farming over a 100 years.
The demise of Bids eye contracting growers in Norfolk and Suffolk was exactly the situation I saw when taking the job on. Namely all risk to the grower in terms of seed, viners, lorries overtime etc. And an overhang of peas in stock. Hence why I cancelled the two new viners on order. Much of course to the chagrin of the farm staff. As This weeks events show Birds eye still have a blast freezer capable of doing all types of veg. And they get rid of a handfull of feild staff.
At the sametime we see an application for a 8,000 cow unit in Nocton on land that viners used to run over. Other parts had potatoes growing as Nocton was owned by the Smith family originaly and started the crisp industry. Again a loss making enterprise with the grower carrying all the costs and Pepsico the owners of walkers successors to smiths calling all the shots. Potato growing under those conditions was not in the farms interests. So closed down.
The same land on Nocton Fen had about the largest beet quota in the Uk and a private gateway in to the back of Bardney factory. Now closed and no beet. It was clear even back then that it was marginal. So I also chose to not buy a new lifter and let a contractor do the work.
Never mind the extraction licece to flood the fen and irrigate the heath. The lagoon at midway pump station is in plan.
Now we have as mentioned an application to turn effectively one of the UK's largest ring fenced arable farms in to a dairy unit run on agribusiness lines to make cost per litre low. As one dairy farmer a week leaves the industry as he is unable to compete. We had for some time the application to turn Nocton in to a wind farm.

I suggest from personal experience that as a barometer of farming it is a good indicator.

Stephen, was this your own experience? Who were the owners when you were managing? was it BFP? Of course, Nocton has been owned by the Clarkes for several years, and has a large bulb processing factory purpose built which presumably will now have a radical redesign.

I feel sorry for Nocton - as an estate it seems to be going through perpetual change, rather than evolution. From traditional arable crops, to bulbs and cur flowers, and now to grass and forage crops.

when we had a tour of a small dairy farm in North Lincolnshire the tenant told us of the impending dairy unit at Nocton. I wish the new owners well with the venture. Whether it is a good move for Dairy farming rermains to be seen - it should at least benefit from economies of scale! However, you could say that of the previous incumbent.

Institutional owners cant be good for an estate like Nocton which I would have thought could do with a sensitive pair of hands for a while.

Yes it is a personal story. And as such that is why I felt it right to comment on the issues. Also as I resigned soon after Mr Clarke bought the farm and as you say that was now a while ago. I hardly feel it is sensitive now. With hindsight maybe I should not have resigned. But I wished to remain as a manager not to carry out instructions.

Without doubt the ownership of Nocton by Royal insurance who also owned BFP was a sad day when all of BFP was sold. As institutional investors don't fiddle and look long term as part of a portfolio. Our budget for machinery and buildings each year was simple it was the depreciation. That is easy to work with. Prior to Royal it was another institutional investor and prior to that the Great lakes trading company of America. Who own sears. Prior to that was the Smith family. Who installed an estate railway with 3 engines a number of stations all over the estate. This was bought from the army after the first world war from Flanders. Both the villages as you probably know where owned by the estate and the pub, village hall. I spent a lot of time with the religious Americans who subsequently have bought a large chunk of Cambridge shire. As their leader believes that when things go very bad. Then at least the Mormons will have food to eat. Got on well with them to be honest. Not sure about the 10% of my earnings back to the church though.

However. I digress as often. Mr Clarke bought the farm for around 20 million in 92 I think. he made it clear it was going to be a sell off from day one. But a dam good hard working businessman. He sold half the farm a couple of years ago. Namely the Fen part. Other bits on the Heath where sold off in the 90's.
He invented fresh flowers and plants in to supermarkets from his Hampshire farm. growing bulbs and flowers all the way to the Scuilly isles. Your area now. Some venture capitalists sold the idea to Mr Clarke's staff that they buy the business out from Mr Clarke. They did and he had a lot of money that he had to roll over. He had in the sale agreed not to go in to flower production for 5 years after the sale any where in the world. But being a smart cookie he knew he had sold out at the top of the market. So a while later he finds from a city chappie that BFP is up for sale as the asset value was too high in %age terms for the fund. Which was capped at 5% agric land.

he bought Nocton to set up in flowers when his sale contract allowed him to. Growing spuds, Beet, peas was of no real interest as at that time if you remember they did NOT get IACS and where capital intensive as well as being outside you the farmers control. Least we agreed on that. So when he cleared that out and offered the employees chance to buy their houses. He had made money on the deal as IACS is income. Then he went back in to flowers bulbs etc and totally dominated the market from one location. Where on the side of the road you see the big old ugly mill building and behind the green houses was where the Smith family nearly built the first crisp factory. But lack of workers meant they went to Leicester. I see Mr Clarke managed to build a small village of houses for eastern European workers. And when I went to the factory in Leicester I felt in another country. Strange old world innit.

Back to the dairy unit, this is gossip that I heard at a recent milk producer meeting

Planning would not be granted as there was not enough land to go with that headage of livestock, to comply with NVZ regulations
Buying 8000 cows would set you back £15-16 million, that's without the investment in acres of concrete, new buildings etc
A brave man would take the decision to spend that kind of money with milk at 20 -24 ppl
Finally, what about the animal welfare issues of cows being kept in large numbers, in all year round etc

make what you will

rogerm wrote:

Back to the dairy unit, this is gossip that I heard at a recent milk producer meeting Planning would not be granted as there was not enough land to go with that headage of livestock, to comply with NVZ regulations Buying 8000 cows would set you back £15-16 million, that's without the investment in acres of concrete, new buildings etc A brave man would take the decision to spend that kind of money with milk at 20 -24 ppl Finally, what about the animal welfare issues of cows being kept in large numbers, in all year round etc make what you will :|

Roger.

Not an argument but the cows are not an issue. They do not need to be bought. The infrastructure yes. The land half of Nocton was sold as I wrote above this land now owned by a UK inward investor might just be available. The NVZ on Nocton middles and Fen was a test area under a NRA pilot scheme for NVZ's back in 1991. As such huge records as to historic levels. Also the digest or and using the irrigation lagoon and other things across whole of Nocton farm might just be a goer.

The idea is not to sell milk is is to process milk. IMHO. As to al year round. It is all life inside. is OK elsewhere in Europe. If it is the romantic thing we think of regarding cows go out and back to fields twice a day no. No different to Branston potatoes having a large part of supermarket business. Globalisation. Or as the giants love to say being global by acting local

dairy farming in the UK has moved on a lot, but is still based on cows out to graze during the day. I worked on a farm on Lolland, in Denmark, where 200 cows were tethered in the dairy year round, 3 x a day milking, never saw a blade of grass since they were heifers. Diet was sugar beet wet pulp, sugar beet tops, ammonia treated wheat straw and brewers grains. Yield back in 1988 was over 8000litres a head, and the replacement rate was about 25%. Animal turned into a machine. Milk tasted fine though.

All liquid muck pretty much, spread on stubles and onto growing arable crops. they were going to set up a separator in the year I left to irrigate wheat with parlour washings and liquid content of separated waste. Solid was to be spread on stubbles for beet land (800 acres arable of which 200 actres were beet)

Since WWII the Danes have had a very intensive approach to farming, and focus heavily on the marketing hence Lurpak and Danish Bacon. anyone wanting to farm has to have a formal ag. qualification. In fact just owning land means you have to have an ag. degree or diploma.

Fact is they see farming as a business not a lifestyle - same with cows at Nocton. They wont be happy grazing cows, but they will be efficient producers - which is what we keep being told is what the global market demands (see Jimmy Doherty programme) Sad but true

In looking up something to confirm my post that Bardney beet factory had closed I found this in the history of the factory. Which gives details of the railway I wrote of


Nocton Estates Light Railway closed:
[1 ft 11½” gauge railway, that ran for 22.8 miles into Nocton Farms Estates. It was built in 1920. Beet was transported from the estate to the ‘Dennis’ Bunker, where a British Sugar Grab unloaded it into rail wagons for ‘Elfa’ washing into the flumes].
A new Hostel was constructed. This was to replace the Nissen Huts, which previously housed the Irish Labour.

And from a more informed source than me.

Towards the end of 1919 the hall and estate were sold to a man who had little affection for domestic life in the village, William H. Dennis. For 150 years the “lords of the manor” had received much support from tenant farmers but the new owners were to change this as they systematically gave them notice to quit, a sad sign of the brutal facts of modern day farming. Over 38 miles of light railway was constructed over the estate to speed up the transportation of beet and potatoes to Nocton station. Much to the glee of the locals the estate again changed hands and become the property of Smith’s Potato Crisps in 1936. Smith’s land agent John Ireson and his wife soon revived life in the area but once again occurrences on the larger scale were to change local life.
The Nocton estate had been sold in 1974 to Tom’s Food but only two years later it was passed on to the British Field Products Ltd.


The warmth of the old tenant farming had long gone but is not forgotten. There is little chance that Nocton will ever again see these past glories.
On Saturday 24th October 2004 a fire broke out in the now disused Hall with arson suspected. At the height of the fire 70 fire-fighters battled to bring the blaze under control but it was to no avail as only a shell was left of this once magnificent Hall but this time it really does look like it is the end

I must also correct some details I wrote. It was 1995 when I left. And of the 7,500 acres at that time. 3,500 acres the fen farm land was sold in 2007 to a Danish not Dutch investor. Maybe the application by UK famers for a dairy unit and land nearby owned by a dutch investor has a lot of synergy. Given arlas statment of intent as on ITV on same topic. posted by SAM.

Interested from a personal perspective I have looked further and Nocton Dairies ltd. will build on a small bit of land on the heath. To the west of the B1188 Lincoln road. This was land owned by the Clarke family. Then the interior roads of the estae can be used to deliver feed from the Danish owned fen farm and any other crops from land owned by Mr Clarke or other farms. The use of Lucerne widespread elsewhere is interesting as growing it on the Heath goes back to BFP's roots and British crop driers.

I would wonder more about the future of bulbs and flowers. But maybe that is just a degree of cyniscm.

SJP

Don't know if you're aware of this book, but it has a chapter on the Nocton railway system

http://www.transportdiversions.com/publicationshow.asp?pubid=5530

Had a couple of chaps visit us in the field while vining last year, one was the father of another viner driver, so would have been called Dealtry ? and the other (his brother in law), whose name I can't remember , was the ex workshop foreman. They had many stories of farming on a scale that most can only imagine

Here's another one I just thought of

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lincolnshire-Lad-Looks-Back-Nocton/dp/0954022297

Nocton has always been seen as somewhat of a 'farming gauge' as to what the next period has in store for us.
In Norfolk, The East Anglian Real Property Co was of a similar ilk.

The bigger farms and estates usually have the backing and investment to do what the smaller boys can only dream of.
By the time it becomes available to the masses, the bigger farms normally sell their investment and move on to the next big thing.
With that in mind, yes, i believe Nocton may well be worth watching.

Lord Muck wrote:

Nocton has always been seen as somewhat of a 'farming gauge' as to what the next period has in store for us. In Norfolk, The East Anglian Real Property Co was of a similar ilk. The bigger farms and estates usually have the backing and investment to do what the smaller boys can only dream of. By the time it becomes available to the masses, the bigger farms normally sell their investment and move on to the next big thing. With that in mind, yes, i believe Nocton may well be worth watching.

Thanks Plato

Fat Hill wrote:

Lord Muck wrote: Nocton has always been seen as somewhat of a 'farming gauge' as to what the next period has in store for us. In Norfolk, The East Anglian Real Property Co was of a similar ilk. The bigger farms and estates usually have the backing and investment to do what the smaller boys can only dream of. By the time it becomes available to the masses, the bigger farms normally sell their investment and move on to the next big thing. With that in mind, yes, i believe Nocton may well be worth watching. Thanks Plato

Isn't he a touring car driver ?

Lord Muck wrote:

Fat Hill wrote: Lord Muck wrote: Nocton has always been seen as somewhat of a 'farming gauge' as to what the next period has in store for us. In Norfolk, The East Anglian Real Property Co was of a similar ilk. The bigger farms and estates usually have the backing and investment to do what the smaller boys can only dream of. By the time it becomes available to the masses, the bigger farms normally sell their investment and move on to the next big thing. With that in mind, yes, i believe Nocton may well be worth watching. Thanks Plato Isn't he a touring car driver ?

yes. Jason Thanks

Another bit of gossip about Nocton's latest adventure,from my guvnor,dunno where he heard it.
Milk will be a by product,what they are after is the shit to fuel an anaerobic digester to produce
electrickery. Sounds like bollocks to me but we is living in a mad mad world.

back to you SJP how does this compare to commie state farms ?

it's strange how those under a communist regime struggled to break free from it
meanwhile in the free world we seem to move closer to a commie style/big brother existence