During the 80s and 90s, small farms like Rainton were under pressure to intensify food production to compete with large scale industrial farms.  This put pressure on the land, the animals and on us.  We were increasing livestock numbers, which meant increasing grass production to feed the animals and also increasing the use of vaccines and antibiotics to counter the increased risk of disease transmission.  The use of artificial fertilizers was both costly and environmentally damaging - at one stage we were spraying around 170 tonnes of nitrate fertilizer on the land in the year, much of which would simply run off into the streams and rivers. 

By the end of the 90s it seemed as if the intensification of the farm was causing far more problems than it was solving, so in 1999 we decided to take a step back, reduce our stock numbers, remove our reliance on agrochemicals and adopt organic management techniques. 
Two chemical-free years later the Soil Association certified Rainton an organic farm and we were able to sell all our milk, beef and lamb as organic produce. 

The benefits of organic farming are wide ranging.  The hands-on approach of organic farming means we're providing more employment for our rural community than a heavily mechanized farm would.  We've seen the return of many wildflower and insect species which couldn't thrive in a chemically managed farm and these in turn attract dozens of bird species, mammals, reptiles and amphibians making our environment an exceptionally pleasant place to work! 

Perhaps the most important benefits have been in our animals' welfare.  We have roughly half as many sheep and cows as we had in our pre-organic days, which gives us far more individual contact with each animal and a much better chance of stopping diseases before they become a problem.  Through preventative stock and land management techniques we have done away with mass vaccinations and have reduced our antibiotic use by around 90%. 

Our animals are bred here on the farm and are allowed to develop their own resistance to the diseases which occur here, reducing their reliance on expensive medicines which might eventually find their way into the meat and milk produced here, better for the animals and better for the consumer.

And now we’re about to go one step further by building a revolutionary new dairy that is breaking new ground in dairy farming.  Take a look at David’s Dairy to find out more about what we’re doing and how the project is going.