LAWTON FARMS

The farm is in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural beauty (AONB) and is endowed with beautiful ancient downland, maintained and improved by low input grazing systems. Beech ‘hangings’ and small woods are typical of the area, replanting and maintenance programmes are in place. While North Farm was an early adopter of the Government's Entry Level Scheme and all its features are in place. The farm was chosen as the first LEAF demonstration farm in 1991 and follows the integrated crop management (ICM) approach, thus attempting to target and minimize inputs. More recently the farm has moved to precision farming using the RTK satellite technology to use auto-steer and variable rate applications of both fertilizer and seed. This has been funded with the help of a SWARM S4P (soils for profit) grant and has been successful in reducing diesel use by 10%. This has meant a better use of inputs while still maintaining or improving yields. All this helps reduce the farm's carbon footprint. The dairy has tackled reducing its footprint by using a SWARM R4F (resource efficiency action plan) grant. The grant was used to install a system that recovers the heat from the milk to make hot water for washing the plant and the bulk tank. The result being a massive saving in energy required to heat water.  Another major investment in this field has been three 50Kw photo-voltaic rooves which came on stream at Upham Farm in November 2011, Chasewoods Farm in 2012 and at North Farm in 2013. The electricity generated from the solar panels at North Farm is partly used locally to build an ice bank for chilling the milk before it enters the bulk tank and also to run the electric fan for the on-floor grain drying stores. Finally we have put in two rainwater recovery systems collecting water from the barn roofs. This water is used for washing down the concrete yards around the parlour.