8:20am Tuesday 31st August 2010
A young farmer’s decision to convert his family’s beef and sheep farm to a low-cost business which could run without the help of subsidies has paid off.
Neil Perkins, of Dinas Island Farm, Dinas, is this year’s winner of the Farmers’ Union of Wales Pembrokeshire branch’s countryside award for younger farmers.
Mr Perkins scooped the award after demonstrating a clear vision of what he wanted to do with the family farm following a visit to New Zealand on a Nuffield scholarship.
One of the judges, FUW county president Dafydd Williams, said Mr Perkins has a clear understanding of the industry as it moves into a period of much lower financial support.
“He is convinced that finance for business investment should be generated by the business in advance of expenditure and that current surpluses resulting from the Single Farm Payment should be invested elsewhere,” he said.
“He is also strongly committed to disseminating the information he acquired in New Zealand and showing how it can be practiced in Wales.”
Mr Perkins, aged 30, was delighted to receive the award.
He said: “Farming has always been a passion of mine and an industry I have always wanted to be involved with. Having grown up helping my father on the farm I then went to study agriculture at the Welsh Agricultural College in Aberystwyth.
“After a couple of years there I returned home to work on the farm full time. I then wanted to take the business a step forward, which gave me the incentive to apply for a Nuffield farming scholarship with the intention of bringing the farm into the modern era of agriculture.
“My aim is to produce lamb profitably off a low input grass-based system without subsidies and be able to market the lambs on the back of this.”
Mr Perkins was nominated for the award by Future Farmers of Wales chairman Rhys Lougher, who stated: “Neil is an outstanding example of a professional young farmer.
“He has taken time away from the business to study agriculture through college and more recently on global travel through the Nuffield scholarship. He has transferred this new knowledge back into practical ways of improving his family farm.
“Dinas Island farm is now well noted for the quality of the sheep stock and its high standards of grassland management.”
Mr Perkins, who became a director of the family farm business in 2002, is married to Lynda and they have three children Osian, aged seven, six-year-old Chloe and Sion, aged two.
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