Video: 90 & Counting – mixed farmer Robert Scaling, North Yorkshire

Cliff Farm, just outside Pickering, North Yorkshire, was bought by my great-great granddad in 1908 and we’ve been here ever since.

We are currently at around 160 acres owned with another 50 acres rented in as silage and seasonal grazing for the cattle.

The farm is split 50-50, growing wheat, barley and beans, then the rest is grass for the suckler herd.

The arable has absolutely crippled us for the past couple of years so I think we’ll be adopting more of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) herbal ley options and upping the suckler cow numbers over the forthcoming years.

Watch the full video interview below.

Right from word go, it sort of gets in your blood, doesn’t it, farming? The farm was a great place to grow up.

You have the freedom of getting out and about – more so than my children do today because machinery is bigger, the straw stacks seem to be a lot taller and I don’t let them do half the stuff I did when I was a child.

On prices…

The beef price is good at the minute, the SFI options on the grasslands are good at the minute – long may they continue – and I do see a good future in animal agriculture, whether it be sheep, beef, pigs or poultry.

The protein requirements of the world are growing and there’s only so many sources that we can get our protein from.

We’ve had inflated fertiliser prices, but we also had inflated grain prices, so three years ago that made it OK.

Then we had inflated fertiliser prices and the wheat price dropped through the floor.

And then we’ve had mediocre prices with the worst weather in living memory, and yields have been horrendous for this harvest.

Cashflows and bank balances are being seriously hammered.

On diversification…

Lately, we’ve done a lot more on the tourism side of the business.

We’ve had to go more down that route to secure the survival of the farm.

There has been a caravan site on the farm for about 70 years, and when I started to farm with my dad in 2011, the first thing we did was commercialise it.

That was a big expense but one of the best things we’ve done.

Four years later, we extended the caravan site again and added a glamping barn.

Then, in 2021, we put in two underground pods covered with soil and grassed over.

On public perception…

Generally, I think the public hold farmers in very high regard.

You look on social media and you can soon find the comments that are very much anti-farming and anti-countryside.

They are just the small minority, but they seem to shout the loudest.

We can have up to 200 people on site from all different walks of life, and I try to get out every now and then and have a chat with as many as I can.

And 95% of them get farming, they get the countryside.

On succession…

Unless we can sort out this inheritance tax cloud we’ve got at the minute, I fear whether there will be anything for the next generation.

My sons or daughter, if they want to carry on, will be the sixth generation.

We’ve been going here for 120 years already. Long may that continue.