CLA East members win global award
Celebrations as Fen Farm Dairy collects top prize
Fen Farm Dairy in Suffolk has won a #WeAreDairy Award – which celebrates the outstanding actions dairy farmers take to protect the land and the welfare of their animals.
The global award was launched in February 2021 by hygiene firm Diversey’s agriculture brand Deosan, together with industry consultants Promar International.
The judging panel was particularly impressed with Fen Farm’s ingenuity and thorough research into each of its sustainability projects.
Fen Farm’s sustainability journey started in 2011, with the installation of solar panels. In summer 2019, they laid 1500 metres of water pipes into a bed of sand beneath a new shed, which heats water for use in the cheese and butter production buildings, as well as the parlour, office building, houses and other buildings on the farm. January 2020 saw the installation of heat exchanges on compressors throughout the farm, harnessing heat and using it to cool milk and heat the preheat tank.
Meanwhile, Rebecca and Stuart Mayhew at Old Hall Farm in Norfolk won a silver at the British Farming Awards in the diversification category. They have, in a very short time, diversified what was an intensive arable and pig business into a cow-with-calf raw milk dairy, farm shop, restaurant and organic vineyard.
Lincolnshire farmer Paul Davey also won a silver in the arable innovator category.