At the age of 35, Olly Harrison is the NFU North West’s youngest board chairman.
Farming 1,200 acres at Water Lane Farm in Prescot, Merseyside he grows winter wheat, winter rape, linseed, sunflowers, winter beans and spring barley. He is also trialling mustard.
His beans are on contract for Highfield Seeds in Leicestershire. All of his wheat and barley is sold through grain co-operative Openfield. All of his oilseed rape goes into Liverpool.
Olly said: “I left school at 16 years old and have been working on the farm ever since. When I officially started working on the farm we only had 180 acres so the business has grown hugely in a short space of time.”
He has big plans for his Combinable Crops Board, wants more members to get actively involved and has set his sights on fighting to maintain access to plant protection products.
“It’s imperative that growers feed into the NFU’s consultation into what a future domestic agricultural policy should look like,” added Olly.
“Personally the only way I can see farmers receiving future support from government is in the form of a subsidy system where we’d get paid well enough for the environmental work we do. I’d like to see a scheme where you can voluntarily include land into a subsidy system which rewards the farmer at varying levels for the environmental work they undertake. It would give farmers a monetary uplift on the unproductive land they enter into the scheme and would allow more productive land to be farmed relatively unregulated in a way most beneficial to the individual farm.”
This year has been tough with yields down 25% across the board. Olly mainly attributes this to lack of sunlight and a few of his crops have been battered by pigeons. Quantities from the land at Water Lane Farm are also low this year.
Olly explained: “Bushel weight is 56 and needs to be 63. We are lucky because I can clean it and get it up to 63. This is important as every point under is equivalent to at least £1.50.”
- Olly was interviewed during harvest aboard his new Claas 770 combine which boasts a 35ft header.