Farm Of The Week: Eggs the answer to sugar beet collapse

It’s taken perseverance for Mike Wilkinson to run his farm the way he does today, turning out 44,000 free range eggs every day and supplying them principally to Morrisons supermarkets.

The North Yorkshire county chairman of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) steered his father’s farm in a new direction after taking over the main part of the family business at Eldmire Ings, near Thirsk, some five years ago.

There wasn’t a chicken in sight under his father, John, now supposedly retired but still living on an adjoining farm with his wife Kathleen and cultivating 300 acres of crops. The land was dedicated to arable and livestock operations.

Having never been much of a cattle man and with beef prices depressed a couple of decades ago, Mike and his father decided to focus purely on crops, predominantly growing sugar beet. Its production had served his grandfather Raymond well before them, when his harvests were loaded on to trains at Sessay to be processed by British Sugar at its factory in York.

What Mike and his father couldn’t have foreseen was British Sugar’s announcement in 2006 that it was to close that very same sugar beet plant.

“When British Sugar closed its Yorkshire sugar beet factory it destroyed the possibility of growing sugar beet because the only option then was to haul it to Newark and the haulage costs didn’t add up,” Mike said.

“I was on the NFU’s regional sugar beet board and when the factory was coming up for closure, Mike Blacker, who was head of the board, got me involved and we went to see the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the Houses of Parliament. We told him what damage the closure was going to have on agriculture in our area.

“The closure changed the direction of my business quite dramatically. In 2009 I built my first free range poultry unit and the reason behind that was because as an arable farm, expanding the business by buying more land would have meant I was paying that off for the rest of my life. I was just going to be slaving my guts out for nothing so I started looking at other opportunities. People round here did free range eggs for a while and I looked at it and a unit would make enough money for the borrowings on it and leave a few quid over as profit.”

Poultry was something Mike had no experience in but he now keeps 48,000 hens between three units and farms 500 acres of wheat, barley and oilseed rape. His free range eggs are sold to Chippindale Foods which supplies Morrisons and Bettys.

“I’ve found that the egg industry works well with the arable industry. The biggest expense is the cost of feed in the poultry business. Feed prices have gone up so I’m paying a lot for feed but at the same time I’m getting a better price for my wheat.”

Just like any other farmer, his profits are dictated largely by the weather. Mike’s farm is located alongside the River Swale and last September the river swelled and flooded his grain store. Half of his autumn crops had to be sown in spring and the cold start to the year means he’s expecting another poor harvest.

“We’ve battled through the bad weather and tried to make the best of it. Last year we had a poor harvest but probably better than a lot of people, but we were still 25 per cent down on yields. Luckily, I did a better job of marketing my grain so on the arable side of the business there’s not been as big an impact as there could have been.

“It’s all about risk management and trying to make the right decisions at the right times. Farming is a long-term game.”

As well as contending with poor weather, Mike suffered more bad luck last July. He seriously considered abandoning his poultry enterprise when an electrical fault caused one of his units to be destroyed in a fire. He had just finished washing the unit out ahead of the arrival of 28,000 chicks four days later when disaster struck.

“I was mortified. I was in the process of building the third unit when the second unit I’d built burnt down. At the time I said that’s it, I’m not rebuilding it, but I ended up expanding it to fit 16,000 birds and three weeks ago the birds went back in.”

A satisfactory insurance settlement has helped get the business back on track, although an over supply of eggs and inflated feed costs are a squeeze on profits, he said. To help mitigate costs, Mike has invested in a multi-tiered system for 16,000 birds.

He is the first UK farmer to use the technology devised by German firm Farmer Automatic which he says has led to feeding efficiencies and a higher welfare environment for his birds. Impressed by the kit, Mike has become the firm’s UK salesman.

He juggles the role with managing a staff of four on the farm and his position at the NFU – the latter being his “light relief” he says and a welcome breather from the farm to meet and learn from like-minded folk. He says he sees the NFU as playing a vital role in ensuring agricultural policies set by the Government and the EU strike the right balance between protecting food production and the environment.

Despite all the pressures on his time Mike wouldn’t be doing anything else. He lives on the farm with his wife Lorna, a fully qualified agronomist who left her job in the agri-chemical industry to bring up their children; Toby, aged ten, Ben, eight, and Katie, five. The pair met during Mike’s cricket playing days in Helperby where Lorna was keeping the score.

“I drifted into farming without a lot of thought. I’ve been driving a tractor since I was seven or eight and helping out on the farm was just great.

“When I start thinking about making or losing money I think on, I have a great lifestyle and that’s what life is about isn’t it?

“It’s 24/7 but I live in a lovely place, we get to spend a lot of time together (with Lorna) and the children can come out and help me on the farm. It’s something I’ve grown up with and luckily it’s always been there for me.

“One of my biggest challenges in life, if the children want to come into the business, it has to be of a size that they can have the kind of life I’ve had.”