“I’m Jeremy Oatey, managing director of our family businesses. What started as a bit of on-farm diversification from just growing crops has become a separate food business as well as procuring and preparing fresh vegetables, mainly for the making of Cornish pasties.”
“The farm business is around 4,000 acres, including 9 contract farming agreements (from short term to 30 years) and about 1,200 acres of tenanted land. We grow potatoes, onions, daffodils (for flowers and bulbs), combinable crops (wheat, barley, oats, OSR, beans). We run 2,000 breeding ewes (lambs go to premium supermarkets) and 250 beef cattle. In Cornwall everyone has a bit of grass they can’t plough and so it was a natural progression to expand our livestock.
“Our cereals are a break crop to a large extent. We grow malting barley for St Austell Brewery for their ‘Tribute’ beer. We look to add a bit of value, use Cornish provenance to our advantage.”
“We began with one employee. Now we’ve got around 50 full-time staff across our two businesses, plus seasonal labour.
“We installed new peeling lines. We expanded the management team.
“We’ve added more solar panels and a natural water filtration system using reedbeds to deal in an environmentally-sensitive way with our veg washing water.”
“Explaining our costs has gone down well. As farmers, we need customers we can work with. Our customers need suppliers they can work with.
“In most cases, where we’re open with our costs — and show evidence, demonstrate effect of input costs — they accept it. You’ve got to build those relationships.
“Our customers are quite surprised at what we’re doing as farmers in mid-tier stewardship and SFI schemes we have and what we’ve done with those funds.
“As we expand, we source onions from East Anglia because growing in Cornwall is difficult.
“Our product lines have grown. We now process a wider selection of vegetables — a high proportion still for Cornish pasties. Our new peeling lines are much more efficient. Some lines, like butternut squash, must still be peeled by hand.
“We spread peeling waste from our factory on the land, so we’ve got quite a circular system, which a factory in the middle of a city couldn’t. So that makes us a bit of a one-of-a-kind.“
“The main reason we joined AF was to source ag chem. We’ve always done our own agronomy and were spending considerable time trying to secure best prices. That took ages!
“Electricity is so complex, we did some contracts with AF and we’re adding more. We use AF for bits of machinery, spares, vehicles. As I get busier, it’s better use of my time to use AF rather than speaking to multiple people. We’re in Cornwall and AF HQ is in Norfolk but I don’t think that matters.
“Our accounts team likes one AF invoice a month. With our contract farming, each farm is set up in its own name. Our finance manager uses myAF to view invoices and keep on top of things.
“Our agronomist and technical manager Rosie, has a good relationship with the AF crop team. I arrange the fertiliser."
“AF is not necessarily going to be the cheapest every time, but it’ll be the best value over time.”
“I haven’t yet used AF Online, but that’s the next thing to try, to save me even more time. If I just want to speak to someone, at AF you still have people available on the phone as well.
“We’re a family business, with our daughter Elizabeth and son William on the board, and we want to take the business forward, whatever ‘forward’ will look like.
“We’ve invested in capacity on the farming, we’ve invested in capacity on the veg processing. Now we’re keen for opportunities in both those areas - new product lines and customers - which is exciting.”
Visit www.agricolagrowers.co.uk to learn more.
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