A tour of ABP UK’s demonstration farm on the Shropshire / Staffordshire border, including a butchery master class from one of the firm’s Master Butchers, and a beautifully cooked Beef Wellington lunch were the rewards for winning last year’s British Guild of Agricultural Journalist’s Agricultural Journalism Awards for three Guild journalists.
As part of ABP UK’s sponsorship of the BGAJ Agricultural Journalism Awards, the firm kindly offered to host winners and runners up of the three categories at its demonstration farm – a promise fulfilled in early April.
Phil Hambling, ABP UK’s director of agriculture and sustainable sourcing, opened the day with a brief overview of ABP UK’s business and explanation of its agricultural strategy.
That included three main pillars – customer alignment as demonstrated by its Gamechanger integrated beef supply chain partnership with Sainsbury’s, driving productivity, and leading on sustainability.
The firm has ambitious targets for reducing its environmental footprint, Phil explained, which included using 60% less water, 40% less energy, lowering food waste and single use packaging by 50% and planting 100,000 more trees by 2030.
While ABP has made good progress on those targets, it also needed help from its farmer suppliers to take the next step, with 90% of the footprint of meat and dairy residing at farm level, which was why it had started its PRISM 2030 programme involving 350 farmers. This programme benchmarked greenhouse gas emissions on those farms and provided tailored advice to drive improvements.
The 134ha Bromstead Hall Farm, purchased by ABP UK in 2015, acts as an important bridge between the company and farmers in demonstrating ways farmers could potentially reduce their environmental impact.
Megan Beswick, farm research lead, and farm manager Andrew Macleod highlighted some of the practices and trials on the farm during a farm tour.
Four batches a year of around 120 dairy beef calves are finished on the farm, with each batch spending around 90 days in a trial shed. A key trial looked at feed efficiency, where weighed feed bins and electronic identification tags helped the farm measure how much each animal was eating and its conversion to protein, Andrew explained.
“We get a league table of the most efficient to least efficient animal, to look for cattle that eat the least to gain the most, which is a very heritable trait,” he said.
That is then linked back to genetics and sire selection, helping to make a significant improvement in cattle finishing time and performance.
In the most recent batch, Meg explained the average age to slaughter was just over 15 months with average daily liveweight gains of 1.28kg/day.
There was also a correlation between feed efficiency and methane emissions, with more feed-efficient animals tending to produce less methane as highlighted with a trial using a “Green Feed machine”, Meg said.
This machine fed a small amount of feed nuts to an animal over a five-minute period, up to five times a day. While the animal was being fed, it’s EID tag was read, sensors measure the ratios of different gases and compare with when no animal was using the feeder, she explained.
Following the farm tour, which elicited a lot of questions from the winning journalists, a demonstration of butchery was conducted by ABP UK Master Butcher Dave Smith and one of his successful trainee’s Scott Edney.
During a very skilled demonstration, Scott, with the help of Dave, showed how the company could de-bone a hind quarter containing top side, silverside and shin into traditional roasting joints, thinner quick-cook steaks more suitable for summer cooking, and even a ‘Thor’s Hammer’ – a whole beef shin on the bone.
During the demonstration, Dave made a passionate argument in favour of consumers buying from supermarkets, citing product consistency and high specification as key reasons.
The day was rounded off by a beautifully cooked Beef Wellington lunch followed by a choice of two desserts.
“It was a really special treat to join ABP for the day, and to walk the chain from newly purchased calves through to the trial shed, then the butchery to the table,” said Olivia Cooper at Agri-hub, winner of the Livestock & Grassland category.
“The practical link between research, farm, and plate was clear, with roll-out benefits to the wider industry. We were all incredibly grateful to ABP for their generous sponsorship of the awards and their warm welcome throughout the day.”
It was a pleasure to welcome the winners to Bromstead and spent time with them on the farm, Phil Hambling said. “High quality agricultural journalism is fundamental to a well-functioning industry. It underpins knowledge transfer, supports good communications and plays a critical role in building confidence across the sector.
“Supporting the Guild’s Awards is about recognising both the quality and importance of that work, and remaining invested in the long-term success of the industry.”
Harvest Lunch 2026
Our annual harvest celebration is the perfect opportunity to catch up with friends, colleagues and network with other agricultural communicators.
