Changing Perspectives: Bringing Home the Bacon

This entry in our Changing Perspectives series features Flavian Obiero, a tenant farmer who moved to the UK from Kenya at the age of 15. He campaigns to make farming more appealing to young people, and promotes regenerative agriculture.

How did you first get into agriculture and food production?

FLAVIAN: Back in 2010, I did some work experience, because I knew I wanted to go into an animal-based degree. After the week I was offered a job, and I’ve enjoyed it ever since.

As for food production, I did food tech at school and always liked cooking. The farm I did my work experience on had a farm shop, so it all tied together – seeing the pigs, seeing the abattoir and seeing it broken down.

That’s why I’ve got involved in butchery now and also cooking hog roasts. Am I a chef? I’d say I’m getting there!

Tell me about the farm you work on. What kind of produce do you focus on, and why?

FLAVIAN: So my focus here is pigs, but we also have goats and sheep. The main reason for the focus on pigs is that I’ve worked in pig farming for over ten years now, so it’s my area of experience. There’s also the economics and carcass balance to consider.

Our kill out conversion for the pigs is about 70%, whereas sheep, goats cows are about 50%. So you have an animal where you can use almost all its body parts, whereas with other animals, yes they’re less expensive, but you can’t use as much. Also, when you look at the gestation period of a pig, it’s three months, three weeks, three days, whereas sheep and goats are five months and cows are nine months.

With pigs, you get ten piglets, whereas with the others, you’re getting one to three offspring. So from an economic perspective, even though feed is expensive, if you do your carcass balance and sell direct, you definitely make your money back.

How can we encourage more young people to get into farming?

FLAVIAN: Sorting out supply chains to make farming more profitable. What’s the point of encouraging a young farmer to come into the industry where they’re going to lose money all their life because the system pays farmers below the cost of production?

So I think farmers and young people are interested in farming, but economics puts people off more than anything else. And even if we can change perspectives on who is and isn’t a farmer, or who belongs on a farm, no one’s going to do it because we live in a society that is so money orientated.

So you can be as happy as you like, but if you don’t have money to pay the bills then that happiness will be short-lived. You can get used to the lifestyle, you can get used to early hours and hard work, you can even get used to being called names. But you can’t get used to an empty bank account.

Why is regenerative farming so important?

FLAVIAN: Well, it’s in the word. You’re regenerating, you’re not just depleting something which is something that our species has been pretty good at throughout history. You’re leaving nutrients in the soil and encouraging the area you’re in to improve alongside you as a human.

But it’s something that’s been done for years and years before. I think that’s probably why I don’t like using the term so much, as I feel it’s an insult to our fore-humans that used to do it and never got the credit. And now, someone’s come up with the word ‘regenerative’ and suddenly it’s the cool thing to do.

What is your favourite thing about the work you do?

FLAVIAN: I think the variety is something I really like. For example today, I got up and got some products ready for a hog roast I’m doing tomorrow, then I fed the animals, then doing this interview, and then I’ve got to head to London to do a talk this afternoon, and do some work for online shop after that. I could do so many other things as well and we’ve got a baby at home too. Sometimes I have to bring him to work with me so my partner can do something else.

I also like the fact that you can see the results of your hard work, and also see these results in quite a short time. I think in some other parts of farming, if you’re looking after pigs for example, once they go on the lorry, they’ve gone. You then lose your attachment to them. But for me, I’ll take them to the abattoir, and they’ll come back to the farm shop where I work. I’ll cut the one that I need for the hog roast and butcher whatever’s left. So I’ve got much more of a connection with the animal than I would have done otherwise.

Are you feeling positive about the future of food?

FLAVIAN: Well, we can’t feel too negative because we won’t survive without food! But I definitely think the way we produce food is going to change. Although it’ll be small-scale to start with, more and more people will be doing it in a regenerative way as time goes on, especially in terms of mixed farming, integrating crops and animals. It makes sense to me as it reduces input costs for fertiliser.

And then there’s enterprise stacking. If you’re using a field to grow wheat, it feeds your sheep over winter, and you harvest that wheat later. You’ve reduced your chemical usage to stop disease because the sheep have eaten that crop.

To me, it’s simple, but it just depends on people working a little bit harder and not just relying on chemicals to do things for them. So things are looking positive, but those who take shortcuts are going to get caught out.

Tell us about the object you have chosen from our collections.

FLAVIAN: I’ve gone for the manure spreader (66/1). Obviously this belongs in the museum because it’s historical, but we still use things similar to this – just a couple of weeks ago I was using a handheld seed spreader.

This sort of object shows the link between history and the present, especially when we’re talking about regenerative farming; things that have been used before are now featuring again. As humans, we’ve used so many farming techniques in the past. When we go back to an old technique, we should highlight that, rather than try to convince people that we’re coming up with something new.

Farming is going through a pivotal stage at the moment. When we hear people denying climate change, we spend too much energy trying to prove to other people what’s happening. Those who do believe change their ways, encouraged by initiatives like SFI (Sustainable Farming Incentive). Those who don’t believe will go bust, and someone else will come in and do it better. It doesn’t hurt to let sleeping dogs lie.