By Debbie James

While the phasing out of direct subsidies and the phasing in of nitrate regulations cast metaphorical shadows over Welsh farming, it is the location of his farm in a so-called ‘rain shadow’ that preoccupies Marc Jones as the season changes.

A weather station at Trefnant Hall, near Welshpool, recorded 400mm of rainfall from mid-January to mid-March in 2020, yet just 40mm from that point until late June.

“When everyone else is worrying about too much rain I’m scanning the forecast in the hope of rain through the summer months,’’ admits Marc.

Trefnant, albeit it 1100 feet at its highest point, sits in a rain shadow so while it is steadily raining elsewhere the farm often remains dry.

Yet this challenge to production on the 200-hectare (ha) Powis Estate farm is one that Marc and his family have learned to live with, indeed capitalise on, by establishing a holiday accommodation diversification, lambing their entire sheep flock outdoors and growing acres of fodder beet as winter grazing for cattle and sheep.

Marc joined his parents, David and Jane, in the business after graduating from Aberystwyth University, where he met his wife, Anna, a part-time lecturer in animal science at North Shropshire College.

At that time, the family was running an inside-lambing, intensive 1,200 Welsh mule enterprise and producing beef from a 120 cow suckler herd.

In 2009, Marc embarked on a Hybu Cig Cymru (HCC) scholarship study in New Zealand and that was a catalyst for change.

He saw how New Zealand farmers had been forced by the abolition of subsidies to cut costs and increase productivity.

Accordingly, the sheep system at Trefnant was overhauled, to a low-maintenance, outdoor system with Lleyns.

This has since been adapted once more, with the Lleyns replaced by New Zealand Romneys five years ago.

The sheep enterprise now consists of 500 New Zealand Romney ewes and 130 ewe lambs.

Through rotational grazing and outwintering on fodder beet, the business can achieve a high stocking rate of 12 ewes/ha and a gross margin per ha of £720/ha.

It is not only the sheep enterprise at Trefnant that has been changed – gone too is the suckler herd, with Aberdeen Angus-cross dairy beef cattle now reared and finished instead.

Two hundred autumn-born calves weighing approximately 50kg and supplied by Buitelaar arrive on-farm in mid-October for calf rearing. A further 150 calves arrive as weanlings in January.

Fodder beet plays an important role in both the beef and sheep systems.

The livestock thrive on fodder beet with the crop also helping to lock large amounts of carbon and increase the organic matter content of the farm’s free-draining ground.

The farm was one of 20 in Wales to undertake a carbon audit through HCC. This revealed a net 7.24 and 9.69kgs of CO2 equivalent emissions per kilo of lamb and beef produced, compared with an industry average of 10-13kgs for lamb and 11-16kgs for beef.

Marc is keen to expand the farming activities but land availability is a barrier so, instead of growing the farm business Marc, for now, uses his skills as a consultant to generate additional income.

He provides consultancy services to ADAS and AHDB and works with KWS Seeds to encourage more farmers to grow fodder beet as well as running his own consultancy business.

Marc’s off-farm work gives him a unique insight into other businesses and systems, learning what works well, and indeed what doesn’t.

Some of that work has opened his eyes to the possibility of taking a different approach to farm expansion, by working with arable farms to introduce cattle and provide organic matter for their soils.

And the changes to subsidy support in Wales could present further opportunities at Trefnant. “We are quite an intensive farm and we have lost 50 per cent of our subsidy over the last five years when there was a shift to area-based payments,’’ says Marc.

“If there are schemes in future for growing herbal leys and for sequestering carbon I think that could work well for our farm.’’