Planton Farm 

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Clare Hill
Farm manager

Farm name
Planton Farm

Farm type
Mixed-Farm

Location
Shropshire, England

Farm size
32 hectares

Primary soil type
Medium clay loam

Temperature range
-5° – 28° degrees Celsius, USDA 8A

Average precipitation
780mm/year

Social structure
Farm business is registered as a company, which is owned by 3 shareholders in a partnership.

Sales channels
Eggs and some vegetables: sell directly to two outlets (local café and organic shop)

Beef & chicken: primal meat, operates as a platform – a shop-in-shop

Produce
Farm side: Pasture-raised regenerative beef, vegetables (tiny part), pasture-raised eggs and chicken (biggest),

Educational services (separate from the farm side)

Contact

Planton Farm

Planton Farm‘s transition to regenerative farming

Climate Farmer since
2021

Previously organic

History

  • Clare was working in the food industry as agricultural manager for supermarkets and national farmer unions. However she missed the practical sides of food production
  • 2012 she started farming, got some sheep, and got into some grazing patterns, and more and more into grass-feed integration
  • 2014 they started a  share farming contract with a landowner and scaled up the sheep herd
  • 2017 She took over FAI farms (organic- but max productivity)
  • 2019 they acchieved a complete pasture only management

Previous practices

  • Reducing inputs (mostly grass feed) until fully pasture feed only
  • Total mixed ration (TMR)
  • Grains based in winter diet
  • De-stocking the sheep
  • Organic rotation (once per season)
  • Overall a rather static system

Investment costs

  • Water infrastructure: pipes, tank, barring the installation)
  • direct sales infrastructure: knowledge and storing of the meat
  • consideration of shade and shelter
  • Tree planting: time, energy for devaluating the land
  • destocking: issues with accounting: looked like a loose lost while reducing the stock, also systems had to get back to balance

New practices

animal_livestock_0.75 pt — green
animal_livestock_0.75 pt — green

Rotational Grazing
❍ Rotational Grazing

Challenges so far

  • Latter of the land lord to not “taking care of the land” – as they stopped topping the gras
  • Mindset of others/ society: Non understanding of the outsides about their managements decisions, receiving push backs on the grazing management while dealing with other peoples panic (OPP)

Outcomes so far

  • Measure with soil mentor, EOV, baseline carbon test (seeing in the future where it goes)

  • Ecological changes through the process:diversity of plant species and grasses in the pasture (ancient grasses)

    • diversity of plant species and grasses in the pasture (ancient grasses)

    • herbal ley option (SFI): clover, plantain

    • diversity of birds: owls on the farm, buzzards, etc.

Learnings of your journey

Designing a regenerative system, really take a step back, consider the whole system, and ask youself what is it about? What your goals, what is your personal context? Making a plan of how you want your farm to look like: how profitabledo zou want/need to be?Do you want your children involved? Do you want to have holiday? Is it about full time or how much time can you dedicate?

It is about design a farming system around all those questions and consider them holistically. Afterwards, bring everyone needed on board.

“I got two children with 9 & 5, and I feel really scared about the future they will grow up into. I want to do as much as possible to help the world, through a way of growing food in a resilient ways. I want for them to learn how to do that, as survival skills might become more important than ever before. Hopefully that means also to provide a more secure space for every one of their generation.”

— The reason why Planton Farm decided to become a training farm

Future ambitions

Showing that a small scale farm can be profitable, as a whole food system, as we are growing much food in terms of volume of nutrition 

Prove that you can make a living of an 80 acres farm. 80 acres is huge and more then enough to make a living from!

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The Southern Light Farm-vertical

This farm is part of something bigger.

So can you. Apply for the Regenerative Agronomy Training.

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