PROFILE WJ Bracey Ltd
Renovation work to water features at Postwick Hall, new home for Charles Bracey (pictured below) and his family have begun over winter.
Cutting costs and keeping control
Charles Bracey is part of a cooperative venture – Delta Farming – going strong aſter more than 20 years. Judith Tooth reports
C
harles Bracey is clear- ly into sport: a top-notch racing bike is leaning in the hallway of his home,
and a photograph on the wall shows him rowing in an eight on the Thames. But it was at a rugby club dinner – he was never good at rugby, he says – that he got talk- ing to some fellow Norfolk farm- ers. They found they shared a common problem. “We were all facing staffing or
machinery difficulties, and none of us could justify taking on an extra man or buying new kit,” he says. “We came up with the idea of combining our resources. That was in 1995, and we’re still going strong. It’s a great success story.” The result, Delta Farming, has six members farming 1000ha be- tween them. It owns all the farm machinery and employs three staff, including foreman, Chris Firman, who makes the day-to- day farming decisions. “With trust, and regular con-
tact, it works extremely well. I think it’s unusually good for a co- operating venture – the concept is common but for various rea- sons such ventures don’t tend to last more than a few years. There have been a few changes along the way, but four of us are orig-
inal members, and we’re still as cohesive as ever. “I think we have a desire and a willingness for it to work. It’s easy to think, the sun is shining, I want the combine here, but if we each had our own combine it would cost so much more. So it takes a certain mindset. The golden days of cereal growing are gone, so you must manage the costs, and that’s what we’re doing. I think arrange- ments like Delta are the future for farming, because each mem- ber still has control but fixed costs are lower.
“
Owning land is a huge privilege and responsibility.”
Charles was just 19 when his father died and he was “thrown in at the deep end”, taking over the family farm his grandfather had bought in Stalham in 1940. He and his brother, Stephen, took on more arable land and ran a contract pig enterprise. Today, they grow wheat, barley, sugar beet and vining peas, with some land rented out for organic pro- duction and some for growing po- tatoes. The pig buildings are also rented out.
>> MARCH 2018 • ANGLIA FARMER 69
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