Farm Management assignment - Boys' Team

Now for the boys' turn! They’re the second group of FdSc Agriculture students we’re following as they complete their farm management assignment over the next year.

The students will be required to complete six tasks for the module including a three year physical plan, budgets and estimates, a peer review and a Q&A time. This module is supported by a local farm, Longpools Farm in Hinstock, Harper Adams University and Natwest, to help bring real life experiences to the classroom.

Chris Hooper
“I’m from Salisbury, Wiltshire on a 1,300 ha mixed beef/arable farm. I spent my placement year in North Dakota, USA, on 40,000 acres growing corn, sunflowers, soya bean and barley. My passion is for the agronomy and arable side of this farm management assignment which I’ll be focusing specifically on, alongside helping the rest of the team with the financial element. During our group meetings we’ve organised the production system, which we plan to use for the assignment and begun researching the financial viability of these systems.”

Matt Lee
“I live in North Wales on a dairy farm. My placement year involved working on a dairy farm, where I gained a lot of experience in the industry. The farm management assignment has given me the opportunity to look beyond the farmyard and to see what goes into running the business side of a farm. Using the skills I’ve gained on placement and the skillset involved with this assignment, I hope to be confident enough to take these skills forward into the real world upon finishing Harper.”

James Lywood
“I live in West Sussex on a dairy farm with 200 high yielding Pedigree Holsteins. On placement I worked on an organic, antibiotic free spring calving dairy farm, in Shropshire. The practical knowledge I gained through working at home and on placement will definitely help my team when completing the farm tender and creating a three year plan for the farm.

“The farm management assignment is a realistic rent tender for a farm, which my group will apply for in front of bank managers, the farmer himself and the module tutor Wyn Morgan. The aim of this assignment is to create the most profitable business within the 15 year tenancy. Since the farm visit, our group have been creating ideas about what direction we want the farm to go towards and discussing about the dairy herd and crop rotations.”

Tom Powell
“I live in South East Wales near the English border and live on an upland farm, where we currently have 350 Aberfield x ewes. For my placement year, I worked on a large mixed farm in Hereford with a number of different enterprises, including a large suckler herd, pig unit and arable enterprise. The time spent on placement, as well as other farms, I’ve worked on, have shown me how important farm business management is in monitoring overheads costs and calculating core profits.

“The three year farm tender, is an excellent exercise and is a realistic real-life situation. Listing and detailing every core aspect of the enterprise will show us how much potential profit we can make per hectare and therefore enable us to calculate a realistic figure of a tender price per hectare. This assignment will prove especially important as I look to expand my own business in the future, and give me confidence when thinking of approaching a bank for potential borrowings.

“Since our initial visit to the farm a few weeks ago, our group of four has been discussing enterprises and stocking rates and the direction we want the farm to go in, and look forward to the coming weeks.”

Stay tuned for regular updates!