Building a resilient farm business in 2025

To farm business consultant Chris Clark there is only one measure of resilience – profitability. His work has shown him 80% of farms cannot cover their fixed and variable costs before support but first-generation tenant farmer Amelia Greenway is not one of them. Amelia explained she and her husband are farming without subsidy, believing a resilient farming business is not dependent on the government for support.

Recently named Devon Farming Champion award winner Niall Tewson frames this as being about “changing and adapting your business to allow yourself every potential to succeed.” St Ewe Free Range Eggs CEO Rebecca Tonks echoes this, saying resilience represents agility and knowing your numbers, and “being in the mindset to react and be proactive.”

Picking up on the importance of profitability to resilience, Chris raised a subject previously examined on Farming Focus™ – working on the business, not just in it (episode 34). For Amelia and her husband this comes through collaboration with their landlord, the National Trust, and other like-minded organisations, supporting them to farm successfully – and put simply, make money.

Niall has used diversification – another topic explored previously (episodes 14 & 23) – as the route to profitability, prompted by his farm’s location in a marketable area of Devon. And although he admits he needs to be profitable to run the farm, the direct access to consumers diversification gives him is one of its greatest benefits. “That for me is what the real buzz is about,” he says.

Having scaled up her profitable egg business considerably, Rebecca acknowledges keeping the ‘family feel’ is a big challenge, but vital as it’s the cornerstone of their brand story – and is as much for their farmer suppliers as their consumers. “There's so much more pride in producing an amazing product if you know where it's going to be sold,” she explains.

So, having started by focusing on the importance of finance to resilience, the panel identified several other factors of similar value to them as business owners. Like Niall, Amelia is also a great advocate of community and connecting with those outside farming and says it sustains her “mentally”. But she also feels it helps their business financially. By selling direct to consumers and having a relationship with them, she says they are price makers, rather than price takers.

Farming with nature is also fundamental to Amelia’s farming ethos, having converted to a low input system and recorded a marked increase in species across the farm, including cirl buntings, not seen for 20 years. “I feel really privileged to be witnessing that,” she says. “We know a profitable business is driven from a nature-friendly farm and an ecosystem that is thriving.”

Chris agrees: “Farmers and farming... will be more profitable when they work with nature rather than substitute for it.”

And for Rebecca, as an egg packer, this starts with the farmer: “If you haven't got a farmer in a happy place, then nothing great is going to come out of that farm.”

Listen to the full episode below - also available via Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Niall Tewson of South Devon Dairy is a second-generation farmer near Newton Abbott. Named Best Dairy Farmer in the 2023 Devon Farm Business Awards, he won both Devon Farmer of the Year and Farming Champion in 2025.

Chris Clark is a partner in Nethergill Associates, a farm-based business management consultancy. He is co-author of The Profitable Farm, Balancing Business, Nature and Energy through MSO, published in April 2025.

Amelia Greenway is a first-generation tenant farmer with her husband Jason on Springwater Farm, selling organic produce direct from the farmgate. They were named Tenant Farmer of the Year in the South West Farmer Awards in 2023.

Rebecca (Bex) Tonks is CEO of her family business, award-winning St Ewe Free Range Eggs. Returning to Cornwall 20 years ago, Bex led the family farm’s transition into free-range hens and expansion into the welfare-focused national brand it is today.