“I’m Nick Tilt. We’re a family-owned business producing eggs, energy and dairy heifers. Some of the business is based where I’ve been a tenant for 20 years, after my father, on 280 acres and another part is on land we own. Herefordshire and Shropshire farmers are some of the most diversified farmers there are making the best of what we have and changing, if that’s what’s needed.”
“I’m always looking for new opportunities, always been very driven."
"In part down to being a tenant with very little capital behind us. But also, way back, a girl I was smitten with told me we’d never get very far because I was only a tenant. That hurt! You need a few things in your life like that to drive you to what you want to achieve.
“On the tenanted farm here near Ludlow, we now rent out 22,000 square foot of building space, I went into a ten-year supply contract with a digester, and I rear a couple of hundred dairy heifers for my brother-in-law dairy farmer.
Nick rears dairy heifers for his brother-in-law
“On 165 acres of land we own, we built a poultry unit. We’ve changed from selling free range eggs to Tesco to supplying Waitrose because we want to be a bit more specialist, more niche and for a premium. Plus, we have built up a property company with buy-to-let houses.”
“I realise I’m not ‘a farmer’ anymore. We have a land-based business. It’s good to cut the emotion out of farming. If we try something and numbers don’t stack up when we analyse it on the computer, then we stop doing it. I will no longer just farm for the sake of it.
“The reality is now I do one day a week as a farmer, two days a week with the egg business and two days a week on property.”
“I was one of the first in this part of the world to join AF, about 20 years ago. What they do, they do really well.
“I get building materials through AF and Travis Perkins. I buy 15,000 litres of fuel and a lot of electricity, about £70 k worth. After Covid and the invasion of Ukraine when prices were all over the place, AF were brilliant. It’d be a nightmare to sort on my own. Just for the electricity service alone it’s worth paying the annual membership fee."
“You need professional procurement people to run that side of your business. And there’s trust. Trust is important. I know they’re looking after me.”
“For us, energy generation. Waitrose have their carbon targets and are keen we have more energy generation plus battery storage for the poultry houses. That I hope will reduce the costs per egg. We took land out of food production years ago for energy crops and I’m always looking for new crops or other income opportunities.
“Another thing that must happen is better use of poultry manure. Our unit produces 1,200 tonnes a year. And there are 22 million chickens in Shropshire and 23 million chickens in Herefordshire!
“We already had cattle and sheep manures in this area. Then sewage companies offered sludge for free and lots of farmers used it. So our soil indices are right up there. Now, whenever whatever is over applied, phosphates run straight off and ruin the river water. Consumers are going to wake up to this and say it’s unsustainable.
“Meanwhile, over in the eastern side of England, farmers are buying phosphates from Ukraine or Mongolia or wherever.
“We’re already talking to two companies about creating a product, a technical solution to extract some of the energy out (as a gas in digester) and the water and then send the solids to farms that need it. Send it east and grain can come on the back loads. It’d be good if AF could help facilitate something like that.”
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