Prioritizing Business Resilience to Combat Greenhouse Gases
Free-range egg farmer Chris Harrison, who is a partner in his family farm located in North Yorkshire, has been driven by the need to have business resilience in order to gain a large profit margin. At the same time, this action is reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint, and he feels glad about it.
In order to build business resilience, he shares the changes he has made to the farm in order to keep a profit margin while lowering the greenhouse gas impact of his business.
One of the changes that he has made to the farm with 820 acres of arable land and 64,000 free-range layer hens is using chicken litter, which contains phosphorus, to fertilize arable crops. Making use of the chicken litters will reduce the amount of extra potash and phosphate needed to prevent harmful effects on the environment. Also, he gets to be more self-sufficient by having more control when they mill their own feed. This helps cut feed consumption by about 10g per bird each day. The amount of soya in the diet for the bird’s consumption was also reduced by 30% over the previous six years.
Investing in renewable energy is another way for him to gain as many profits as possible. Despite struggling to get permission to install wind turbines and negotiate a grid connection for the solar panel installation, he is able to install two 100kW wind turbines and 250kW of roof-mounted solar panels for the farm. He gained extra income from selling extra energy back to the grid. Currently, they are able to generate up to 130% of the energy needed for the farm. They are eager to employ battery storage in order to make more use of their renewable energy sources in the future.
Chris has taken many driven actions to build business resilience, maintain profit margin and, at the same time, reduce the greenhouse gas footprint. While all the actions are important, he emphasized that “The main piece of advice I would give to anyone wanting to improve their business resilience is to surround yourself with the right people.”
