By planting difficult-to-manage land with trees at Ardoch and Threepland Farms, East Renfrewshire, Iain and Marion MacDonald have successfully diversified their businesses.

Soil Association Scotland recently spoke to Iain and Marion about the work required to utilise woodland creation in order to bring financial benefits from previously unproductive farm land.

Changing direction

Previously, Iain and Marion managed a herd of 160 beef cattle as well as a flock of 500 sheep over their 250ha, until 2011 when they began looking for an alternative focus for their farm.

Iain said: “You have to look at the bigger picture and get the best out of your farm, rather than keep doing what you’ve always done. It’s getting harder to make a living out of farming. I might have considered leaving farming if I hadn’t diversified.”

By 2013, the beef operation had wound down and the flock of sheep had increased to 700. Adding to a few existing trees on their farm, Iain applied for a felling licence for a wind-blowing area of woodland.

He was also accepted for the Non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme and installed a log biomass boiler in order to use up the timber stocks for fuel.

Benefits of woodland

Iain also received a capital payment for £70,000, allowing them to plant 29,000 trees over 12ha of land.

This contract, received from Rural Priorities, began in 2013/14 and will run for 15 years, with Iain and Marion receiving annual maintenance payments worth a total of £59,400 which goes towards covering the cost of fencing, protecting and maintaining the trees as well as covering the costs until the forest becomes productive for the farm.

“Beforehand, stock would go down steep bankings and into the burn, or cross marshy grass to get to fresher pasture.

“Rescuing calves and lambs and gathering time was a nightmare,” said Iain.

He added: “Now these areas are fenced off it’s made a big difference to sheep management.

“In four or five years the trees will be big enough to make a lambing corridor, with a line of shelter each side, with good grass in the middle.

“The first scheme was about creating shelter and managing the land better,” says Iain. “The second is an investment for our daughters.”

Integrating farming and trees

More recently, at the end of last year both Iain and Marion successfully applied for a second woodland creation grant in order to utilise poorer upland grazing land under the current Forestry Grant Scheme to plant 80,000 trees over 37.5ha.

They initially received a grant of £197,841 with an annual maintenance payment of £8,775 over five years.

Iain said: “The site was picked because very little of it was good upland grazing.

“It was a disaster, mainly rushes. Over the last 15 years I’ve sprayed, limed, slagged and topped it and at the end the rushes were as thick as I’d ever seen them. I spent around £15,000 for very little return.”

The land is now a sapling conifer plantation consisting mainly of Sitka Spruce and Scots Pine.

“Looking forward, I see the woodland as a commercial investment, which we could sell on to an investor, or wait and harvest the timber ourselves,” said Iain.

Marion added: “It’s a way to make a similar amount of money without being so physically hard on ourselves.

“Working all the hours of a day, not getting good returns because of the price of inputs, doing it all yourself. People talk about the three Fs – feed, fertiliser, fuel – with prices always on the up. It makes it hard to balance the books.”

Iain has found planting woodland to have been hugely beneficial in developing and getting value out of non-productive farmland.

In addition, by planting trees on their land, Iain and Marion are meeting part of the Scottish Government’s climate change plan. With their trees sequestering carbon in the soil, it is helping to cut down on greenhouse emissions.

Iain said: “Some people think farming and trees don’t go well together but it can work. You get different incomes at different times – it’s a better cashflow, rather than being reliant on selling all your stock on one or two sale days.”

Iain added: “When I look at how well the farm looks now, with the bad bits shut off, it’s so much tidier and we have some money coming in to invest in other areas on the farm.

“We are miles in front of where I thought we were going to be with it.”