I am the managing partner in a 62ha family farm in Essex.  I returned to the farm in March 2004 after graduating from Imperial College at Wye in 2003 having studied Agricultural Business Management and am also BASIS and FACTS qualified.  The home farm is based around a large equestrian diversification with 70 stables which was set up in late 2004 when the dairy herd was sold.
The main arable business is 1250ha of whole farm contracting growing combinable crops within a 20 mile radius of the home farm.  In 2011 I completed a Nuffield Scholarship researching ‘Soil fertility and fertiliser use efficiency’ where I visited Australia, Argentina, USA and Germany and following on from this we are heading down the path of direct drilling with targeted cultivation where required and trialling cover cropping.
Our business philosophy is to: “sustainably increase business profits through maximising efficiency and appropriateness of all inputs and through managing soil fertility”.  Soil health and precision farming therefore play a big part in this overall strategy.