An article looking at the innovative farming model of Pipers Farm, focused on supporting small scale family farmers through a centralised farm model.
“When I was a kid, all the neighbouring farms were small family farms,” explains Peter. After getting married and spending a few years farming 1800 acres on a high hill farm in Wensleydale, Peter and his wife Henri returned to the farm Peter grew up on in Kent, where his family were raising half a million chickens a year in an industrial setup. Realising this ever-more intensive style of farming wasn’t the path they wanted to take, they set about building something different.
“By 1987, all those family farms had gone,” Peter points out. “And we knew we wanted to build a business that helped to sustain the fabric of the smaller-scale farming businesses.” After looking at close to 100 farms in six months, they eventually bought a 52-acre farm in Devon and named it Pipers Farm.
Excerpt from Sustainable Food Trust, August 2018, words and photos.