Our business produces over 1000 tonnes of strawberries, 300 tonnes of raspberries and 600 tonnes of blackcurrants annually. The land is fertile, irrigated grade 1 and 2 medium sandy loam, which has meant production has been able to focus on producing premium flavoured varieties for supermarket lines, supplying a variety of producers including Ribena. The farming operation is also the UK’s largest supplier of Soil Association organic blackcurrants with over 100 acres in production for this specialised sector. The nature of the blackcurrant crops mean that a minimum tillage approach has been easy to adopt with plants being in the ground for over 10 years.
Our 200-hectare farm business grows organic and conventional soft fruits and berries. These fruits are highly perishable, so they are sold in both fresh and frozen form to minimise food waste. We’ve already achieved net zero status for greenhouse gas emissions on the farm by improving productive efficiency – growing more food with reduced inputs – while locking up carbon in the grassland that covers the farm.
Rainwater harvesting
Our fruit is grown on soil-free coir substrate and the ‘tabletops’ for fruit growing are installed on uncultivated grassland. We are also determined to drive down our demand for water and ensure that our use of this key resource is sustainable. We have achieved this by harnessing the heavy rainfall typical of the west of England through rainwater harvesting for use in crop irrigation during spells of drier weather.
Mitigating flood risks
We have installed a series of water storage lakes on the farm which means that we now have the capacity to collect the rain that falls on our land and polytunnels. This water, which is collected in the lakes and then circulated through the polytunnels throughout the growing season, would otherwise run off our land and down the valley, contributing to flooding risks. It also means we don’t place additional stress on water resources during the peak summer season.
Trickle irrigation pipes, which run through all the polythene tunnels, ‘drip’ water onto the fruit crops and minimise water waste. Introducing these water efficiency techniques has helped us reduce the amount of water we use to produce the crop by 50 percent.
“As well as mitigating local flood risks, the farm lakes have conservation value and have quickly become a haven for wildlife. For the first time in my life on this farm, we now have otters here."
By regularly capturing excess water when it rains, we manage to keep our lakes topped up and so we have become very resilient to the risk of droughts. This simple but effective system of collecting surplus rain and storm water provides 80 percent of our water needs and reduces the pressure for us to resort to abstracting water from our farm borehole or tapping into the mains water supply.