North Devon – Building business resilience: Using data to make decisions

Join us for an event with Newlands Farm and strategic dairy farmer, David Luxton, to discuss managing challenging times and building resilience to market volatility.

Find out what Newlands Farm are doing to make their farming business resilient and learn how to apply this to your own farming business.

With challenging times in the dairy industry, farm businesses must be resilient to market volatility and be able to respond rapidly to changes.

At this meeting, we will be joined by Ian Browne of Farm Business Consultancy Group, who will delve into areas of David and Sarah’s business to highlight examples of what’s working well and identify areas for further refinement.

We will also look at how data is key to making informed business decisions, and what forms can be collected on farm to drive the decision-making process.

This meeting will cover

• How to make your business more resilient
• What Newlands Farm are doing to futureproof their business
• What data can be extracted to aid decision-making

About Newlands Farm

Newlands Farm, near Bude, is run by David Luxton and the Haworth family. Having been in the family since the 1960s, Newlands Farm runs an all-year-round calving, pedigree Holstein Friesian herd and milk 180 cows through a guided robotic system.

Previously a traditional grass-based system, the farm invested in a guided robotic system in 2019. This has delivered an increase in yield from 8,500 litres, to about 11,000, which the team continually review and hopes to lift further.

The 250-acre farm is all down to permanent pasture which they reseed as regularly as they can. They’ve always seen good yields and are currently achieving around 4,000 litres from forage, which they hope to improve during their time as a Strategic Farm.

A further 70 acres are rented, 35 of which is to grass, with the remainder used for maize, which David trialled for the first time in 2021.

The milking herd consists of 180 pedigree Holstein Friesians. All cows are fully housed, including youngstock, which has helped increase growth rates. A new, purpose-built shed houses the robots and milking herd.

Over the next few years, David is particularly keen to focus on his financial key performance indicators (KPIs).

The team are also looking to improve their age at first calving, which they hope to reduce to 24 months. To achieve this, David is specifically focusing on his heifers’ growth rates and looking to make further improvements to their management.