A farming family are set to embark on an exciting project to futureproof their business thanks to Agriconnect and Carter Jonas.

Gary and Sarah Allis, who farm a 600 acre arable and beef unit in Alford, near Skegness on the east Lincolnshire coast, along with their son Charles, will undertake a Desktop Energy Development Audit with experts at Carter Jonas after winning a competition at the Low Carbon Agriculture show, run by Agriconnect.

 

Keen to shore their business up for the future, the Allis family said they were thrilled to have won the opportunity to work with Carter Jonas and glean technical advice from its renewable energy team.

Mr Allis said: "Our son Charles is ridiculously keen to develop the farm and increase the business's resilience and we see lowering our carbon footprint and generating renewable energy as logical next steps for us with the two going hand in hand."

As well as growing combinable crops over 600 acres, the Allis family also finish 4-5,000 cattle on a bed and breakfast arrangement with Buitelaar.

"The beef side is all about fast growth but the finishing part of it is the most carbon friendly as we feed a diet made up of by-products, Trafford Gold, maizemeal and pressed sugar beet pulp, which we achieve good weight gains with," said Mr Allis.

"My son also has 220 of his own dairy crosses, manly Angus and Hereford crosses, which he rears. They are very carbon friendly as they grow so fast.

"We know that with energy demands as they are, the biggest crop in the future will be energy and we are keen to see how we can be a part of that."

After winning the competition at Low Carbon Agriculture, run by Agriconnect, which also owns weekly agricultural magazine Farmers Guardian, experts at Carter Jonas will assess the site for opportunities for energy developments including solar PV, battery storage, wind repowering and electric vehicle (EV) charging.

The team will also guide the family through the potential systems, their sizing, development and scale, plus planning permissions and return on investment.

Associate Partner in the energy team at Carter Jonas, Jamie Baxter, said: "It was great to meet the Allis family and hear all about their farm. We are used to supporting landowners to get best value with a range of services including heads of terms and option negotiation. We are currently supporting projects a range of technologies including solar, battery storage, wind repowering and electric vehicle charging hubs.

"This assessment will provide an understanding of the potential energy development opportunities at the farm. As we usually do for these kinds of studies, we will provide high level figures of potential development scale, planning risks and likely returns."

Mr Allis added: "We have been growing straw biomass for power plants for about 20 years so we have always felt like we have played some part in generating renewable energy.

"We would like to discuss options around anaerobic digestion (AD) on farm as we have the land to be able to grow the feedstock. If we can grow maize or fodder beat instead of oilseed rape which is now almost impossible with the flea beetle problem, it would help black-grass control on the cereals side."

AD also makes sense on the beef side of the enterprise.

Mr Allis added: "With 2,000 cattle in the yard manure is a liability to us at the minute even though we spread as much as we can in spring. Every year we plough it in and we are shocked at the benefit to crops and seeing the savings that can be made.  

"AD would enable us to use that manure as a feedstock and turn it into nutrient rich digestate to give us a more uniform product, making it much more precise."

Mr Allis said the wealth of expert advice on offer at the show helped him assess the range of opportunities available for his farm.

"We found attending LCA for two days extremely informative," he added.

"It was useful to listen to seminars with speakers on a range of topics under one roof and then go and visit the exhibitors on the stands to ask more questions and get the answers we need to make decisions on-farm. I came away feeling very positive about the future of my business and where the industry is headed."

About Carter Jonas

Carter Jonas is a leading UK property consultancy and estate agent. Covering commercial, residential, rural, planning, development and infrastructure, our national network of over 1,000 property professionals across 34 offices provides both national coverage and unrivalled local expertise.