A pioneering eco-conscious farmer who works the same land Rabbie Burns once did has saved his business by going green.
Dad-of-four Bryce Cunningham told how his family nearly lost it all eight years ago. But now the 36-year-old, who runs Mossgiel Farm near Mauchline in Ayrshire, has been hailed for his groundbreaking environmental efforts.
They include becoming the first dairy farm in Britain to eliminate single-use plastics as well as switching to electric delivery vans and heating his estate with biomass. He revealed he’d had no intention of running the dairy farm back in 2013.
He was working at car giant Mercedes-Benz when triple tragedies struck the family. His dad and grandfather – who Bryce called Papa – were both diagnosed with terminal illnesses in quick succession, leading him to move back to Mossgiel.
The pair sadly passed away around a year apart. That was followed by the milk price crash of late 2014 which brought the business, in the family for three generations, to the brink of collapse.
Bryce said: “We ended up almost bankrupt within a month of my dad’s death. We lost just over £100,000 of income.
"At that time, I had just moved into the farmhouse, and with no milk buyer for our milk, we had to sell all the cows, sell the machinery and were basically left with 28 Ayrshire cows – the same as what Papa had in 1948, weirdly [when he took over Mossgiel].”
Robert Burns famously farmed Mossgiel with his brother from 1784-86. But it was a connection Bryce nearly lost entirely.
He told the Record: “It’s Christmas 2015, and I’m standing at Killearn Market with 100 cows for sale. We were totally broke… I was standing there basically selling off my family’s legacy.”
It was after that he began to seriously think about overhauling the entire way Mossgiel did business. They couldn’t afford fertilisers to spray the land, or cereals and grains for the cows, so the farm became organic and the animals grass-fed.
Mossgiel transitioned to producing less but higher-quality milk – designing in-house “batch pasteuriser” vats. It gives the milk a richer taste and texture, with cream rising to the top in the old-fashioned way, sold in classic glass bottles.
Word of mouth spread and demand grew as the product claimed a string of industry awards. From the brink of bankruptcy, Mossgiel is now an astonishing success, supplying up to 300 coffee shops, indy retailers, and every school in East Ayrshire.
Bryce maintains a modest herd of 45 cows and employs 40 people – but via an organic dairy co-operative including 150 UK farmers, Mossgiel’s pasteurisers supply a whopping two million litres of milk a year.
Farming in Scotland is one of the top three sources of climate emissions and a major driver of wildlife loss.
The SNP-Green government is set to announce a new system of farm funding and “vision” for agriculture which it’s hoped will address eco concerns.
Anne McCall, Director of RSPB Scotland, said: “Burns would be delighted with the approach being taken by farms such as Mossgiel. We need to see this approach adopted more widely.”
Lang Banks, Director of WWF Scotland, said: “It’s great to see farms such as Mossgiel bringing to life a vision of reducing emissions and restoring nature.
“This year, a new Agriculture Bill gives us a chance to make farm funding fairer and greener.”
Deborah Long, Chief Officer of Scottish Environment LINK, said: “As Robert Burns worked the land and travelled around Scotland, he would have seen far more birds, insects, trees and wildflowers than we do today.
“The speed at which we’re losing our species and habitats is staggering - but if we take action now we can turn things around.”
Speaking from his farmhouse, Bryce said: “Rabbie Burns wrote To a Mouse in this very farm, about 100 yards from where we’re sitting. And he wrote that because his plough hit a mouse’s nest, overturning it and destroying that mouse’s world.
“He recognised then, 250 years ago, that human impact on the environment was causing a biodiversity problem. Now, we’ve got a responsibility to sort this.... but still to create food production that works with nature and not against it.”
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