PROFILE WJ Bracey Ltd >>
“Walking across a field of wheat one day I had a call about a plumbing problem that need- ed fixing in a house I was rent- ing out,” he says. “I moaned, but I also realised that, compared with wheat, property rental gave a better return. Given the choice I would farm, but there’s a limit to how much can be done with an acre of wheat. More of the farm in- come is now from land and prop- erty rental income.”
One of the reasons Delta
Farming works so well, Charles thinks, is that all the members have interests beyond arable farming. While he builds hous- es, another grows daffodils and two rent out holiday accommo- dation. They are involved, vari- ously, with the Broads Authority, the Royal Norfolk Show commit- tee, suckler cows and wildlife con- servation.
“It works provided nobody has
too much time on their hands to create problems that don’t exist. None of us has 40 hours a week to think about crops – but Chris has, and he does the best job. Yields have improved and costs are steady.”
All the members of Delta
Farming are, in turn, members of either Yare Grain or Aylsham Grain. Marketing agent for both is Andrew Dewing of Dewing Grain. Charles was one of Yare Grain’s founding directors and has seen it grow to “a fantastic operation” with investment ap- proaching £4 million in new dry- ers and processing equipment. Andrew has worked a miracle there, he says. “Yare Grain started with 5000t
capacity, having raised £1 million by selling shares. Now 25,000t a year goes through it. It’s a fan- tastic success story: it’s a store, a dryer, a processing plant, where all possible problems can be over- come. If you have, say, malting barley just outside the quality specification, it can be blended, turning what would have had to go as feed barley into premium grain, and be the difference be- tween making a profit and not.” While central grain storage and marketing offer solutions for improving margins, other chal- lenges are just around the cor- ner. Brexit or not – and Charles thinks it’s madness – legislation in farming will get tougher. It will become more and more difficult to justify, for example, spraying a
70 ANGLIA FARMER • MARCH 2018
AD
Top: The new farm includes land known as Postwick Grove, captured in a painting by Norwich artist John Crome in 1817. Left: A barn on the riverbank at Postwick Hall would make a perfect holiday home. Above: Renovation of what may have been a gamekeeper’s cottage at Postwick Hall to a residential or holiday let.
whole field, and it would be fool- ish to resist, because the alterna- tive – having particular chemi- cals banned altogether – would be worse. And ploughing will be- come a thing of the past, possibly in the next 20 years, with trac- tors replaced by smaller robotic ‘power units’.
“
Delta Farming is unusually good for a cooperating venture.”
Always interested and in-
trigued by building, Charles’s first experience was renovating properties on the farm at Stalham as sitting tenants moved out. He really enjoyed the work, and, with wheat at £65/t, he went on to buy and renovate a couple of terraced houses in Norwich, which turned out well. Then came his first new- build project … and one thing led to another.
“I’m just finishing a site with
eight properties at Filby, and then I’ll start on a small development at Postwick. There are challenges in common with farming: a terri- ble cash flow, and the numbers are huge and quite scary, and there are lots of regulations and inspec- tions. The biggest difficulty is the number of people involved – there could be 15 on site in one day, and I have to make sure all the mate- rials and equipment needed are in place.”
One of Charles’s building pro- jects involved converting a series of farm buildings at Witton. He and his wife, Louise, and their two daughters moved into one of them to be closer to Norwich for school and Louise’s work. Now they are about to move again, to Postwick Hall, a 160ha farm along the Rive Yare which hasn’t seen much in- vestment in recent years and which brings opportunities for farming and property develop- ment.
“The farm is in the final year of HLS, and I’m exploring the pos-
sibility of a new application. It’s ideally suited to conservation work, with 30ha marshland, love- ly woodland and well established hedgerows. There’s a barn on the river bank which would make a perfect holiday home, and some rented residential properties to be updated.
“Owning land is a huge privi- lege and responsibility, and most farmers hope to leave their land better than they found it. The way I see it, I’m just looking after it for a bit.”
BUSINESS FACTS
• Delta Farming member • Yare Grain founding director • Builder and renovator • Move to new farm
CONTACT
Contact details E:
info@deltafarming.co.uk
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