Farm News  |   October 28, 2024

Too Big But Too Small

Hitting a barrier with grain growing at Lauriston Farm…

Closeup photo of wheat growing at Lauriston Farm on a sunny day, with views over the Forth to Fife behind

This should be the beginning of our third season of growing winter wheat at Lauriston. We started growing wheat in autumn 2022 with small trial plots of 25 varieties from the ancient grains of Emmer and Einkorn, through to modern varieties of barley from the James Hutton Institute. We also began scaling up the work of the Granton Community Gardeners heritage wheat plots. They have been growing wheat on street corners in Granton for eight years, using seeds provided through Scotland The Bread’s Soil to Slice project. In 2022, we took the grain from one street corner and sowed 500 square metres at the farm. In 2023, we scaled this up to sowing half an acre of our Rouge D’Ecosse wheat, and half an acre of a Hebridean landrace* of oats and rye (thought to be the UK’s oldest cereal landrace).

Our third growing season was due to start this autumn.

We wanted to scale up to growing two to three acres of grain (using the seed saved from this year’s harvest). For the first time, we could have grown enough grain  to start having Lauriston loaves for sale in the Granton Garden Bakery – a key milestone for our plans.

But…

Photo of a small wheat field at Lauriston Farm, with many people in in, harvesting the wheat

Too Big For Working By Hand, Too Small For Contractors

To grow at that scale, we are dependent on contractors with machinery to prepare the ground, drill the seed and harvest next year – machinery we neither own, nor can afford to buy. We can’t achieve this scale with our tools, not even with the willing hands of our community.

As the season’s window for sowing approaches an end, we are stuck. A contractor cancelled on us. We booked another. Then they cancelled. We are not their priority. We are just a few acres, compared to the huge commodity grain farms out there, where contractors can really make their income. We have hit the ‘too big, but too small’ barrier, a barrier farmers of small and medium sized farms know all-too-well. It’s a difficult realisation, off the back of our harvest so full of hope.

It’s a sobering place to be, but also an important place to be.

We share this dilemma with many others. It’s one that needs to be solved.

We Need A Soil-Friendly System For Small Farms

Using heavy machinery is not the best solution, even when we can get contractors. Those huge bits of machinery are hard on soils, causing compaction and damage. Ideally we would have lighter kits that better fit our small farm. Like there used to be – before farming became synonymous with vast tracts of land, massive machinery, chemical management and few people. Some of those bits of kit still exist in barns around Scotland, many in disuse but maybe repairable. We need things like a seed drill, a power harrow, a roller, a plot harvester, a grain drier, a de-huller and cleaner. We need to work out a system that fits our farm. We need to find the money to invest in the kit that will work for us.

The Joy of Grains at Lauriston Farm

From the beginning, our grain growing has been a joyful experience on so many levels. Hundreds of people have joined in sowing and harvesting our plots. They have experienced the fun of broadcasting grain by hand, by tossing it in the air and letting the wind and gravity disperse the seed into place. We organised Walk in the Wheat events prior to the harvest, where people came and learned a bit more of the history of our particular grains, and of grain growing in Scotland. We made biscuits to give people the chance to taste the difference between wheat, emmer, rye, barley and spelt. People drew pictures of the grain and admired the beauty of all the various grains we had grown. This year, our Land Partners Grassroots Remedies and Rhyze Mushrooms joined in, sharing how they use our oats (both the straw and the green grain) for herbal remedies, and how mushrooms are grown on our straw. For the 2024 harvest, we had over 200 sign-ups for a series of volunteering sessions, where people helped us bring in the grains using scissors and buckets. At our community kitchen, Mahala from Granton Garden Bakery taught people how to make sourdough bread using our rye and wheat. A group came together to hand thresh and winnow the grain from 12 different varieties grown on small trial plots.

Closeup of three pairs of hands, evidently of people three different generations, saving seeds from grain stalks

 

Every time we invite people to volunteer to help us with the grains or to come learn a bit more, we have been so delighted to see so many people from all sorts of backgrounds come and join us on the farm – all the interesting chats that take place between people in the field are just as much a part of it all, and bring so much joy to the work we do.

Rebuilding A Broken Connection

Most of us eat bread. Bread has been considered a staple food here in the UK and in many other cultures for hundreds of years, yet many of us don’t have much of an idea of how our grain looks, and how it becomes the bread we eat. As an urban farm, with so much potential to get loads of people involved, we want to produce the food AND help us all to get in touch with our food, where it comes from, how it’s made, and how we can try to grow and bake it in ways that are good for our health as well as our soil and our community.

This short film from Scotland’s Farm Advisory Service explains more:

Scotland’s farms currently grow enough wheat to make bread for us all, but the majority of our grains go to animal feed and the alcohol industry. The bread we buy from supermarkets is made from wheat that has come in from places like Canada and the Ukraine (prior to the war there). The grain in Scotland is grown on vast commodity farms, and is entirely dependent on machines, fertilisers and pesticides.

Re-Creating Local Food Systems

At Lauriston Farm, we want to do it differently. Our ambition is to develop into growing seven to eight acres of grain a year (huge for us, tiny for most grain farmers in Scotland) using organic agroecological principles, within an agroforestry** system. The grain would be made into bread in partnership with Granton Granton Bakery and other small bakeries, creating a valuable local food system, and cutting out the vast food miles currently embedded in the bread system.

Creating healthy food systems is essential work. The food industry is currently responsible for a quarter of all global greenhouse emissions. We all need to eat, so it’s crucial that we create food systems that reverse the greenhouse emissions story around food, allow biodiversity to flourish and ensure that what we eat is affordable and healthy. The world needs local, regenerative food systems.

Can You Help?

If you know of any of those useful bits of kits hiding in a barn, do let us know. If you are interested in helping us develop our local grain system and are able to support us investing in that – let us know.

We will continue to work on solutions to break the ‘too big but too small’ barrier and move the Lauriston Farm Grain Story onto the next chapter.

A photo of people on a sunny day at Lauriston farm, dragging a large white sack of grains out of the field

*A ‘landrace’ is a variety of farm crop, or species of farm animal, adapted and bred for the local weather and soil conditions. Landrace varieties become part of a region’s culture and character, and can be crucial to survival in that area. They are a legacy, handed down through generations of farmers, for the benefit of their communities. They are only possible when farmers have the knowledge and the freedom to do their own selection (rather than being tied to using trademarked products). At Lauriston Farm, we are growing the Hebridean landrace for the cultural heritage and for the future, as a resilient crop in a changing climate.

**Agroforestry means using trees in agriculture. The word is new to many people, but it’s been common for a long time, eg. keeping pigs in orchards, or planting hedgerows to shelter crops from wind. Here at Lauriston, for growing grains, we have planted trees in long straight lines, creating ‘alleys’ that will support the grain crops.

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