A Direct Marketeers View

Extract

I was a farm manager of 2,500 acres, cereals, sugar beet, vegetables, milking cows, suckling cows and outdoor sow unit producing weaners. I moved to Mells in Suffolk 26 years ago and set up a 200 sow indoor unit producing weaners before turning that into 350 sow unit, finishing half of the progeny and selling the other half as weaners.

In 1993 I set up a 600 Cotswold outdoor sow unit, producing weaners for Louis Dreyfus Livestock (LDL). My landlord was and still is a partner in the business. We have a very simple partnership, he provides the land, I run the business with no cost to each other; everything else is 50-50. After four years LDL wanted to get out of pigs altogether so we bought the herd. We then went on to finish pigs outdoors in large finishing kennels with runs, which was not brilliant in wet conditions!