Within two weeks of putting together a business plan, the couple were offered 110 acres on a three-year Farm Business Tenancy (FBT).

While farming that, Richard continued his work as an agricultural contractor and Lyn in her job as a lecturer in agriculture at Pencoed College.

Richard’s enterprising outlook also saw him laying turf around the Trafford Centre in Manchester and transporting sections of the modular pitch at the Millennium Stadium to and from a storage site at the end and beginning of rugby seasons.

“Where I could get work, I did,” he says.

In 1998 the Anthonys took on a further 100 acres at Tythegston and what followed was rapid expansion as more land became available on longer term tenancy agreements.

Expansion

“We went from farming 210 acres to 1,600 acres in the autumn of 2001,” says Richard, who is now Vice-Chairman of the NFU Cymru Crops Board.

Being offered those longer-term agreements, on farms including Sealands Farm, gave them confidence to invest.

They secured funding from HSBC with a business plan built around a wheat price of at least £110 a tonne.

What they hadn’t reckoned on was the price tumbling to £70 a tonne in their very first harvest in 2002, and that low price persisting.

“The first few years were very challenging,” Richard admits.

Did he not feel like quitting at that point? “You don’t know Richard Anthony!” Lyn laughs.

Prices recovered and, by nursing back to health some of the tired arable land, yields increased.

Much of the land had been in arable production for many years and soil organic matter was depleted.

The Anthonys introduced 3,000 tack sheep onto one block, constructing a permanent boundary fence around the fields and grazing the sheep behind an electric fence on forage rape, stubble turnips and grass.

Regenerative farming

“When people talk about regenerative farming like it is some kind of new system, we were doing it before the word was even invented,” says Richard.

Some of the ground had resistant ryegrass and they dealt with this by growing ryegrass in the rotation to smother out the resistant variety.

The Anthonys approach to improving land caught the attention of other landowners. “We went full circle with us being offered land rather than us chasing it,” says Lyn.

Nine crops are grown in a six-year rotation.

Soil biology

“We are all about soil biology, building levels of soil organic matter,” Richard explains.

Wheat is followed by westerwold ryegrass, forage rye and vetches, grazed by tack sheep or the Anthonys’ own flock of 800 Lleyn-cross ewes until late December. It is then cut in mid-April and clamped, and a crop of maize is grown.

Westerworld ryegrass, forage rye and vetches are again planted, grazed and cut. The land is returned to maize followed by wheat and, thereafter, oilseed rape (OSR).

Once the OSR is harvested, Phacelia is grown for six to eight weeks and wheat direct drilled into that.

Hybrid varieties of OSR are used, sown at a low seed rate of 30 – 35 seeds per square metre.

“That creates an open canopy which allows in more light in the spring,” says Richard. “The plants will grow up like trees with up to a metre and a half of pods which means we can get yields averaging 4.8 tonne a hectare, in a good year.”

With an adapted drill, four crops are planted simultaneously.

“We plant spring beans down the front legs, buckwheat and oilseed rape in the main hopper and vetch on the back,” says Richard.

“The companion crops help to combat flea beetle – protecting the rape and allows it to establish and creates a canopy with the spring beans to prevent pigeons from landing in the crop and eating it.”

The vetches and spring beans fix nitrogen (N) and, as a consequence, a first application of N is no longer needed in the spring.

The business

Across the business, the Anthonys grow 1,100 acres of wheat, 780 acres of maize, 480 acres of OSR, 30 acres of lupins and the rest of the land is down to grass.

Grain is sold to the feed mill at Carmarthen and the maize and clamped silage to dairy farmers.

Although the lupins can provide an alternative protein source to soya, which is again sold to dairy farmers, it is a challenging crop to grow, says Richard.

“There is no support for research – if the government wants us to produce homegrown protein they have to support it with funding, farmers can’t do that alone,” Richard reckons.

Passionate about research

The couple are passionate about research and host National List trials. They have 3,500 trial plots of wheat and up to 800 OSR plots on behalf of NIAB, Agrii and plant breeders.

“We farm in an area where there is quite high disease pressure and a lot of the work in the trials is in developing disease-resistant varieties that will benefit us going forward, we might not see the benefit for 10 years, but someone has got to host the trials,” reasons Richard.

Digestate is used as a nutrient source on the crops – the business handles all the digestate from the Severn Trent Stormy Down plant; 80% of the fertiliser needs comes from that.

“We treat it as a resource not a waste product, we spread it according to the needs of the crop,” Richard explains.

“It takes a lot of handling, we have invested in precision equipment for applying it, but economically it is proving to be a good system.”

Richard and Lyn’s son, David, also applies it on other local farms.

Contracting

When he returned to the farm after studying at Harper Adams University, he took on the contracting side of the business.

Richard and Lyn didn’t want him to be in their shadow, they were keen for him to have his own profit base.

“So many sons end up in the shadow of their father and the business doesn’t progress, we wanted David to become his own boss, he has too much drive and ambition to be in my shadow,” says Richard.

“He has his own team of men and any work he does for us he bills us for. If he wants a bit of advice he asks us but he makes his own decisions and makes it pay and is growing that side of the business.”

Together with his wife, Emma, David also runs four holiday lets, three of those on Sealands Farm.

Although many of Richard and Lyn’s machinery jobs are outsourced to David and his team, they and their five staff do the combining and cultivation work.

Favourite time of year - harvest

Richard’s favourite time of the year is the harvest.

“The entire year is set out with the aim of growing crops to get them to harvest,” he says.

“At harvest time we are not only harvesting but planting next year’s crops, we are seeing the benefits of last year’s hard work and making a fresh start on next year.”

Although he has a very positive outlook, that was tested in spring 2024 when relentless rain compressed all the cultivation work into a very narrow window.

“We got everything planted but we came very close to a very serious situation, if we’d had rain for a further two or three weeks it would have been too late.

“It was a lot of work but we did catch up, it was exhausting not just for us but for our staff too.”

Time away from the farm

With such a challenging year there has been little opportunity for downtime but December and January are the months when the workload does ease off and in the quieter times they also like to visit their daughter, Catherine Crowther, and her family in Cambridgeshire, where she is the regional director for the CLA in the East of England.

Richard enjoys time away from the farm for some game shooting too.

“It’s a chance to be with like-minded people, there are so many challenges these days with mental health but talking to lots of friends at that time of the year really helps.”

NFU Cymru's wellies display

NFU Cymru’s symbolic display of wellies on the steps of the Senedd in February was an important coming together of people too, he adds.

“It had a huge impact, the public support was incredible.”

Looking to the future, Richard says Welsh Government has to work with the farming community to find a viable Sustainable Farming Scheme that works for all concerned.

“I truly believe that with the right mindset and cooperation from Welsh Government officials, we can all achieve what we want out of it, it can be done.”