How a shift in grazing grew more beef for less money

Soils with greater water-holding capacity, more diverse pastures and big savings on winter housing are among the standout results of a four-year grazing project at FAI Farms near Oxford.

The farm includes floodplain meadows bordering the River Thames and undulating parkland.

Regular measurements of 55 economic, environmental and ethical metrics were made between 2020 and 2023, as the farm transitioned to a system of high-density grazing for short bursts, with long rest periods.

See also: 4 farmers outline bale grazing benefits in field lab trial

Organic system

Organic since 2001, the team at FAI Farms believed their production system was the best it could be.

“Organic is seen – often rightly – as the top level you can get to,” says science and technical lead Dr Amanda Deakin, who took up her post partway through the project.

“We thought we were doing all we could for the environment and biodiversity.

“What we didn’t realise, especially when we started to look at things like water infiltration, was that we might be organic, but actually, we’re not managing our grazing very well.

“And the soil structure, while we’re not putting chemicals on it, is pretty compacted – we’re getting water running off, we’re overgrazing.

“Being organic is great, but it doesn’t [necessarily] mean you’re doing all you possibly can for the environment. There are improvements to be made on every [organic] farm,” says Amanda.

Amanda Deakin © FAI Farms

The farm had already changed from set stocking to rotational grazing. The result was a 50% increase in pasture production, greater daily liveweight gains and a reduction in finishing times.

Expansion of the farm’s 80-90 head suckler herd, plus followers and finishers, was seen as the obvious next step, except that the farm had no additional winter housing.

The alternative was to outwinter – if grazing could be managed to avoid damaging the pasture through the winter months.

The Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing project, sponsored by McDonald’s, gave the farm the opportunity to find this out and more.

The grazing system involved moving cattle daily, grazing about 25% of the sward in spring, 50% in summer and 75% in winter, and rest periods of at least 60 days and up to 120 days.

Water infiltration

Data analysis from 90 points across 18 fields showed that the water-holding capacity of the soil had already improved markedly.

“The farm used to flood every year and then dry out in the summer, and we’d think, where has all the water gone?” says Amanda.

When comparing spring 2020 with spring 2023, water was percolating through the soil three times faster (more than 30cm an hour) on average. In some fields, it was 100 times faster.

“Good water infiltration means you’ve improved your soil structure – there are more pore spaces, longer rooting depths.

“And when it does rain, rather than water running off, it’s going into the soil, forming our reserve for the next season so we can grow more grass.

“So, for drought resilience and general weather resilience, it’s a really important metric.

“That [scale of improvement] is similar to what regenerative pioneer Gabe Brown describes in his book Dirt to Soil about his farm.”

Furthermore, weather extremes, particularly the 2022 drought, had little impact on the farm: “We didn’t have to change what we were doing at all.

“We still outwintered all the cattle, we still produced enough hay, we still went to our outwintering grounds at the same time.

“All around us were brown fields where farmers were having to buy in extra forage,” she adds.

Age at slaughter

With the move to outwintering, and concentrates no longer fed (the farm gained Pasture for Life certification in 2021), average age at slaughter and daily liveweight gain might have taken a hit.

However, Amanda says the reverse was true: “When we were set stocking, we were looking at 25-28 months to slaughter.

That decreased with rotational grazing to 25-26 months, and then to 22-24 months with AMP grazing.

“Daily liveweight gain went from 0.76kg/day with rotational grazing to 0.8kg/day over the period of the project.

“The diversity of the pasture has increased massively, so maybe having access to a more diverse range of plants allows the animals to pick and choose what they need.

“Also, moving to outwintering means not having the stress of coming in for winter and having to deal with that upset. It’s a more consistent system.”

Outwintering has also resulted in savings of £1.37 a cow a day in winter variable costs, or £205.50 a cow over a 150-day winter, compared with AHDB averages.

“For the 97 animals we put to the bull in 2023, this would have equated to a winter housing saving of £19,933.50,” says Amanda.

© FAI Farms

Pasture diversity

She puts the increase in pasture diversity down to longer rest periods; high-intensity, high-density grazing, which gives cattle less opportunity to select new shoots or overgraze; and trample seeds into pasture.

Some of the biggest improvements in diversity – up to 30 plant species or more, including big increases in bird’s-foot trefoil and longer-rooted grasses such as cocksfoot, as well as pyramidal orchids – have been seen in the parkland where the cattle outwinter.

Feeding hay bales imported from species-rich meadows elsewhere on the farm has also helped.

“Being organic is massively beneficial for biodiversity,” she says. “But while we had all the trees and hedges, in the middle of the fields where we’d overgrazed, there wasn’t a lot of biodiversity.

“Now, with the taller grass grazing, there’s a lot more biodiversity within the fields as well as around the edges.”

© FAI Farms

Carbon footprint

Part of the project involved using Trinity AgTech’s Sandy tool to estimate the amount of carbon sequestration on the farm.

This showed more carbon was being sequestered in the permanent pastures than was being emitted through the suckler beef enterprise.

“That’s based on modelling, not actual soil organic carbon data,” Amanda stresses, adding that baseline measurements were taken in 2022.

“We will get more actual data in 2027, which will provide verification for the modelling.

“Also, we’re fairly low stocked, so we do have a lot of land to sequester carbon. But the results show that potentially, beef can be carbon neutral or even carbon positive if managed in the right way.”

Next steps

With more grass, and having successfully moved to outwintering, the plan is to grow the suckler herd.

During the project, a total of 230 dairy beef cattle (in two batches) were finished on-farm alongside the sucklers, so Amanda is confident herd size could be doubled.

Plans have so far been hampered by repeated TB breakdowns. Provided the next tests are negative, dairy cross Angus heifers will be bought in to put to the farm’s Angus bull.

Meanwhile, a further project with McDonald’s is under way to help 11 beef farmers across England and Wales transition their systems to AMP grazing.