PROFILE Calibre Farming | Dofygate
Family farming – and a folding gate
Simplified management of three family farms has cut costs and led to new innovation. Judith Tooth reports.
jokes farmer and Dofygate design- er Jim Alston. He and his brothers have three family farms in North Norfolk between them. Each has its own cropping plan and market- ing strategy but labour and ma- chinery are run by a single compa- ny – Calibre Farming – to cut costs. Calibre grows and harvests the crops on 546ha across the three farms – currently malting and feed barley, feed wheat, sug- ar beet, oilseed rape and beans – but each farmer retains control over what he grows and how and when to sell it.
“O
The brothers – Jim, Hugh, Robert, and David, who also
ur biggest ar- guments have nothing to do with farming,”
runs Alby Crafts and Gardens, set up by their parents – wanted the profits from each farm to stay with that farm. They did some re- search but it was difficult to find something that wasn’t really a contract farming arrangement or where the profits were shared between the farmers. So Jim, who manages Calibre on behalf of the family, devised a system. “Because the profits belong to the members, Calibre is not de- signed to make a profit, but to farm
“
Calibre is a vehicle by which each farmer can retain all the profit from his crop
efficiently,” he says. “Machinery and labour costs are fixed and covered by month- ly payments from each member, and income is based on crop charg- es – that is, each crop has a cost set against it which is charged out monthly – and the two can be matched. So Calibre is a vehicle by which each farmer can retain all the profit from his crop. “Now we’ve done the same with
chemicals – that is the one vari- able in the system – because we wanted to store them centrally to cut down on stock. If each farm had its own store the sprayer operator would be having to manage part loads and part fields on each farm. “All chemicals are bought in by
Calibre, and I estimate how much each crop will cost in chemicals and set a chemical charge for each farm, which is then billed and paid monthly, and evenly, throughout the year so that Calibre absorbs variation in cash flow. “At the end of the year I create
Jim Alston, the eldest of four brothers, manages Calibre Farming Ltd, growing and harvesting crops on three family farms in North Norfolk. Above: Waiting for drier conditions to harvest the last of the sugar beet by contractor TW Witham.
a balancing charge to work out ac- tual application compared to what has been paid, and each farmer is billed or credited accordingly. It works well because we have sim- ilar soil types, similar crops and the same agronomist.” Fertiliser and seed, on the other
hand, are best stored close to the point of application, so are bought by each member for his own farm, taking advantage of bulk pur- chase offers from Anglia Farmers.
Grain storage At harvest, grain is stored tem- porarily on-farm and each mem-
MARCH 2018 • ANGLIA FARMER 51 >>
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