Make a donation

Help fund our work to amplify nature-friendly farming’s benefits to farmers and policymakers across the UK

Policy & Views

Read a variety of articles, including topical blogs, comment pieces on policy developments and updates on key moments in farming.

Campaigns

Catch up with our latest campaigns and find out more about our work.

Farm Practices

Explore information on many aspects of nature-friendly farm practices.

What is the NFFN?

Discover our mission, our vision and the challenge we meet.

Meet The Team

Meet the farmers in our regional steering groups and the staff team at our core

FAQs

Got a question about nature-friendly farming? We've got it covered here

Supporters

We're proud to work with many organisations who support our mission.
Farmer Stories

Dave Oates - The next chapter for a seventh-generation nature-friendly farm

England
Case Study
Livestock
Mixed
Organic

All photos: Joanne Coates © for the Nature Friendly Farming Network

When the Oates family arrived at Rosuick Farm in Cornwall in 1750, King George II was on the throne, and the famous writer Samuel Johnson was alive and publishing. England has changed a lot in the intervening two and a half centuries, but seven generations on the Oates still farm their land on the beautiful Lizard Peninsula, with Dave Oates and dad Chris farming and Dave’s brother Stuart working alongside them on a part-time basis. 

In other ways, though, Rosuick Farm has resisted the march of time, particularly when it comes to the intensification of agriculture after World War II. The farm was an early adopter of organic status back in 1999, with Chris having been interested in the subject since the mid-80s. And before that, Dave says generations of Oates farmers were never that interested in pushing production levels as high as they could go.

Our whole approach is very long-term and is about farming for future generations. I want to make the most of what we have already and ensure we have a commercially viable business to hand over to my children.

Dave Oates

“We’ve been an outlier for most of our 250 years,” Dave says. “When everything changed around the war and money started really being made on farms, my great-grandfather and grandfather weren't keen on farming intensively. They kind of just carried on as it was. Our farm has always been respected, and it’s a really beautiful valley. All the generations have always appreciated what we have. We’ve always known we have to protect what we have here.”

The result today is a farm that works in close collaboration with conservation organisations on extremely valuable land for nature and biodiversity. Rosuick now has a growing herd of breeding pedigree Welsh Black cattle together with their followers and is in the process of switching its sheep to the Clun Forest native breed. Stocking densities are low, with around 75 breeding cows and about 100 ewes spread across a site spanning some 1,500 acres, about 250 acres of which are owned by the Oates family. 

More than half of the site is Cornish heathland, a valuable ecological landscape protected under SSSI status. The farm is also working with Natural England to create and restore more of this type of habitat across the Lizard Peninsula, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The farm is also looking into agroforestry, with plans for 15,000 trees in a variety of species and planting layouts across 80 acres as a pilot scheme for the Forest for Cornwall project. 

“When thinking about agroforestry, people should consider the value in layers," says Dave. "It starts with the subsoil being enhanced through the deep roots, then up to the topsoil with enhanced biodiversity, followed by the surface crop, which is often commercially grown alongside fruit trees and soft woods for medium-term financial returns. There’s also the long-term goal of hardwood timber as well as the benefit to the air quality and carbon sequestration. And in all these layers, there are benefits to nature.”

The farm’s grazing pattern is designed around managing habitats and seasonally-available land. Through the summer months, breeding cows and calves graze the lowland heathland before moving onto species-rich grasslands in autumn and then into woodland pastures.

In winter, the cows strip-graze on brassica crops and bale graze before moving in February onto the aftermath of the wild bird seed plots. The cows come inside only for calving and spend the rest of the year outdoors. The sheep are used for land management, grazing freshly seeded leys and species-rich grasslands on smaller sites not suitable for cattle. Sheep from Rosuick also spend time grazing on the clifftops. 

However, while Dave says Rosuick remained “locked in time” to some extent, some elements of modern farming did creep in and are now being changed. Dave remembers the use of nitrogen fertiliser when he was young, while extensive planting of ryegrass removed plant biodiversity in the fields. Hedgerows were also removed, and fields were made smaller during the 20th century, though not on the same scale as elsewhere, with the average size of its 200 parcels of land remaining around four or five acres. Dave remembers attending Groundswell, the regenerative agriculture festival, with the mindset that Rosuick was 20 years behind in its model but left feeling it was actually ahead and other farms were catching up with its traditional mixed system.

Some of what has been lost is now being restored. The farm loves working with universities, researchers and a range of other organisations. One of its projects is called Meadow Match, which arose from a collaboration with Exeter University and Cornwall AONB and ensures meadow restoration uses plants harvested from local species-rich grasslands to ensure local provenance. This means habitats appropriate for the full ecosystem in an area are created. Herbal leys have been planted in the last few years, which Rosuick has found very helpful for finishing beef animals and providing high-quality hay for the winter. The hay from these leys and the grassland grazing also keep medical bills down as they contain natural antiseptics and anti-inflammatories. 

Hedgerows are allowed to grow and trimmed back as little as possible, which is a particular point of pride for Dave. “The Cornish hedge is an internationally recognised feature of incredible biodiversity and the oldest man-made structures in the world still used for their original purpose,” he says. 

The farm is also involved in trials to bring back ancient grains that suit organic farming and involved in a trial of different varieties to provide resilience against disease and see which ones do best in the farm’s soil. Similar trials of rare arable plants and cultivation techniques have also been done at Rosuick.

Farming in the UK as a whole needs a good shake-up. For a long time, it's relied on payments to stand still. There’s a huge opportunity at the moment with payment schemes that make sense for a farm business and make a profitable farm that encompasses excellent environmental standards and produces high-quality food. I just hope the government will financially support nature-friendly farmers on a long-term basis.

Dave Oates

Biodiversity is flourishing. The heathland is home to the rare marsh fritillary butterfly and the devil’s bit scabious wildflower it likes, and there are large numbers of bats and birds around, which Stuart says is a testament to the strength of insect populations in the farm’s grassland. Rosuick also includes a coastal portion of National Trust land, which is grazed by their sheep and is now once again home to the Cornish chough: an example of grazing animals working well for nature, as the birds use sheep wool caught in fences for nesting material.

The Oates family has always tried to do things differently at Rosuick, which in the past included now-common innovations such as having a farm shop, holiday accommodation and a camel trekking business on site. The farm still has a licenced wedding venue and hosts a wide variety of community and engagement events, including the annual conference of an organisation bringing together people concerned about the natural world and its future. For Dave, constant innovation is a vital part of 21st-century farming. “If you’re doing it the same way as everybody else, you’re doing it wrong,” he says.