By Jack Bosworth, Director, FJ Bosworth & Sons. Published 11 March 2022.
I hope everyone is well. How the world has changed in just the short space of time between my last piece and this one is unthinkable. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Ukraine defending their country, and with those who have had to put their whole life in a bag and flee for safety.
A welcome rise for some, a serious concern for others
Most arable farmers will be pleased to see the recent hike in wheat and barley prices. For those of us who retain and feed our own cereals, the forecast is a different conversation altogether.
Feeding our own grain when market prices are high, particularly during the long stretches when pig prices have been low, has always been a frustration. It is also one of the most important shields we have.
Why being mixed cuts both ways
The frustration is straightforward. We cannot simply sell the cereals when prices are good, because we need them to feed our pigs.
The shield is just as straightforward. Because we grow a large share of our own feed, we do not need to buy in as much grain as a unit our size otherwise would. We are not fully insulated from grain market volatility, but we are meaningfully less exposed than a pig business that buys every tonne it needs.
Internally we treat it as one pot. Everything is costed in as if we have bought the grain from the arable enterprise at spot price, but no financial transaction has actually taken place. It is the same business, the same bank account, and the same outcome.
That accounting matters. It tells us, in plain pounds and pence, how each enterprise is really performing, instead of letting one quietly subsidise the other.
The £280 a tonne problem
At today’s prices the business can cope with paper transactions for our own wheat at around £280 a tonne. There is no way we could afford to buy in other wheat at anywhere near that level, unless pig prices follow grain prices at the same pace. I cannot see that happening any time soon, unfortunately.
We used to grow more than enough cereals to feed our own pigs. Since the herd expansion, we no longer have enough land to do so. The gap between what we produce and what we need has become one of our biggest commercial risks.
The plan: more land, on the right terms
One area I have been working on, and want to expand, is gaining access to more land.
We are not in a position to buy. What we can do is pay attractive rents, work properly with landowners, and improve their indices over time using pig slurry and farmyard manure. For the landowner, that means soil that is in better heart at the end of the agreement than at the start. For us, it means more home-grown cereals and less exposure to a volatile grain market.
This is exactly the kind of partnership our farm structure is well set up to deliver. We have the slurry, we have the FYM, and we already run the kit to apply both accurately. RTK guidance on every operation means we know precisely where it has gone.
Control at both ends
All any of us in farming really want is for our output prices to follow the trend of our input costs. It is absolute madness that we have so little control over making that happen.
A business will only survive if what comes in is more than what goes out. Any other scenario and your business has an expiry date. I will keep working to gain more control at both ends of the pig and arable chain we run here, through more rented land at one end, and through the relationships and routes to market we are building at the other.
About the author
Jack Bosworth is a fourth-generation farmer and Director of FJ Bosworth & Sons, an arable and pig farming business at Spains Hall, Willingale, Essex. The farm has been in the family since 1919, and Jack farms alongside his father Stuart Bosworth, who was named Farmers Weekly Pig Farmer of the Year in 2011. The business is Red Tractor assured and runs an integrated farm-to-fork model, with home-grown cereals milled on site using solar-generated electricity.
You can follow Jack’s articles on fjbosworth.com, or get in touch via the WhatsApp link on the site.
Fourth-generation farmer at Spains Hall, Willingale. Runs the contracting team and writes most of what appears here.