Nuffield Scholar, Tamara Hall has been running Molescroft Farm, a family arable farm, for twenty years. During this time she has made significant changes to the operation of the farm, including setting up community allotments, entering various stewardship agreement, and undertaking a comprehensive review of cropping and cultivations across the farm.

The farm is mainly arable, farming around 700 hectares of family owned land plus contracting. The land is direct drilled with with cover crop in the rotation. Crops include winter wheat, winter oilseed rape, spring malting barley, spring beans, spring combining peas, and spring oats for Quaker on a LEAF Audit contract. Their wheat goes to a local mill, Bradshaws, with their bran going to produce Bran Flakes. Through this they are members of the Kellogg’s origins group which involves a group of forward thinking Kellogg’s growers working together to trial new ideas – the latest of which has been the nitrogen use efficiency trials using the N-Tester. They are also members of Heineken low carbon barley group.

The farm has several different projects running alongside the arable business, from 15 offices (which are fully let), 70 allotment plots managed by a not-for-profit business (fully let with a waiting list), 199 kW biomass boiler and 190 kW of solar panels. There are 4 dog walking fields with a fifth in planning, and two children’s nurseries providing year round care for 126 0-5 year olds, run by her sister, Camilla.

Tamara is passionate about involving the local community in the farm and educating the next generation about where their food comes from, and how farms can integrate high quality food production with caring for the environment and farm wildlife. They have had up to 50 school visits per year.