Wyndford Wagyu and PDM Produce – Year 1 agricultural students' farm visit

On September 26, first-year Agriculture students visited PDM Produce Ltd and Wyndford Wagyu as part of their ‘Welcome Week’ activities.

PDM Produce is a fascinating business in terms of both the scale and the quality of fresh produce grown by their dedicated team.

Each year, PDM Produce crops a variety of wholehead and baby leaf salads across 3565 acres of high-grade arable land. In many cases cropping this land two to three times a year. To put this scale into context, PDM Produce grows 704 acres of Iceberg lettuce, all of which is harvested and packaged on site through their two self-supplied processing and packaging factories, this in turn produces 28.8 million heads of Iceberg lettuce each year.

In terms of baby leaf salads, 5.3 million kilograms of Spinach is grown per annum, all of which enters UK supermarkets within 24 hours of leaving the field, in my opinion, it's amazing! The visit really gave me a great insight into a very well-managed commercial fresh produce business and an understanding of the agronomy, management and logistics required. We were also given a tour of their processing facility, and an appreciation of the infrastructure required to keep a business running 24 hours a day: a critical skill in agriculture.

A sister business, Wyndford Wagyu, is a premium producer of Wagyu beef, but also a pioneer in Wagyu breed genetics. As part of the visit, we were guided through the rearing and finishing of full-blood Wagyu beef, understanding both the risks and management challenges involved and how the business has overcome setbacks through their establishment.

Wyndford Wagyu has produced some of the breeds top bulls and the World’s number one for marble scoring. It was a great privilege to learn so much about their business, coming from an arable background, I found the beef enterprise really fascinating in terms of genetics and their beef system which I compared with other systems I have experienced.

From my perspective, this diverse farm visit in my first week at Harper was a great experience as it really helped give me some context so I can put the theory in lectures into practice on a commercial system which in turn, has strengthened my understanding of the industry. It was also a good opportunity to get to know fellow students.

By Fred Turner, first year, Agriculture with Crop Production Science