Adapting to Change: Llŷr Jones Highlights Resilience and Innovation at CARAS Cymru Conference

The natural optimism of farmer, entrepreneur and charity worker, Llŷr Jones, shone through in an otherwise sobering CARAS meeting. Navigating the Global Economic Landscape and its implications for future land use and food production in Wales was the theme of the conference, held at the Royal Welsh Showground.

Llŷr Jones, who farms in Cerrigydrudion, told the gathering of elite Welsh farmers and agriculturalists that he looks for opportunity in any challenge. And these include establishing a hydro plant and installing ground source heat pumps, as well as selecting white egg producing hens for efficiency and maximizing yield.

He explained that a ‘light bulb’ moment came in 2013 when he realized that without Single Farm Payment, his farm was losing money. The farm was now, after a lot of time, work and thought, resilient and providing a future for his family.

Llyr said: “When you get new policies and new rules coming in, I find they are just challenges that you have to overcome.”

Examples of his adjustments include rearing 140 calves on a Cost of Production contract, after his feed bill increased by £30,000 a month after Ukraine was invaded. State of the art technology means he receives a text if one is unwell, before there are any obvious signs.

And he changed to white hens once because they produce 500 eggs a year, compared to a brown hen’s 340 eggs, increasing the flock’s egg production by three and a half million eggs. The move also reduced the carbon footprint as the inputs are the same.

The NVZs posed a new challenge and Llŷr found he could overcome the problem by building a taller poultry shed. This helped to reduce the amount of muck produced and the height meant heat could be drawn off from the hens to the muck pile, so evaporating the water and halving the amount of muck to be removed.

Two lorry loads of muck is sent to a farm in Cambridge each month. The cost of returning the straw works out at £95/100 a tonne for barley straw, a saving as the market price is around £130.

The scene had been set by Dr Calvin Jones, professor of Economics at Cardiff Business School. He began by saying the only certainty was uncertainty. The cost of inputs under the Trump administration was likely to be more of a challenge to Welsh farmers in a potentially tariff oriented world than international demand for Welsh food.

He predicted a refocusing on what we can do in our country. Politicians in Cardiff Bay were much more focused on local resources, circularity and sustainability. It’s about optimizing, for instance, land use.

Rory Hutchings, agricultural lawyer and partner at HCR Law told of his concerns that land being used for natural capital could become the ‘new green coal mining’, with the money made flowing out of Wales. The one thing, looking forward, will be change and that would bring challenges for some.

The dial towards public goods and not paying for production was moving faster and faster. Head winds such as world economics, policy and NRW are all factors businesses have to try and cope with. The idea that farming is the be all and end all is gone.

There would still be some excellent food producing farm businesses, but they wouldn’t be just going to do that. They would have to be thinking about farming schemes.

And there could be great opportunities in terms of landscape, nature and natural resources to sustain the diversified farm business of the future. The answer might not be about getting more stock or doing more hours, but to do proper succession planning and think about what might work best.