The innovative scheme inviting businesses to make use of rural land and build a business there is returning this November.
Pitch Up! is returning to Balcaskie Estate at Fife but is now part of a fast-growing network of farms across Britain all offering land and the chance to get involved in a community of enterprises.
Pitch Up! invites new and existing businesses to present their ideas for a rural enterprise. The scheme seeks to identify like-minded organisations and individuals that will make use of fertile farmland and will work collaboratively within an existing community. Those businesses benefit from investment, shared expertise, distribution, staff and marketing opportunities and crucially, grow within a dynamic environment that focuses on the circular economy.
The project launched in 2021 at Kingsclere Estates in Hampshire with Balcaskie the first partner to join Kingsclere in 2023. This year sees an additional four farms across England join Pitch Up!, creating a network of diverse land which provides even greater opportunities for businesses and individuals seeking opportunities.
Rosie Jack, Business Development Manager at Balcaskie said:
“We know that there’s a real demand for rural land so our message is: we’ve got land, come and use it! We really do welcome approaches from businesses of all shapes and sizes. We’ve seen the businesses who’ve joined us at Balcaskie thrive through collaboration. There are so many advantages: what one business perceives as waste, another views as a crucial raw ingredient; one business’ fallow period is another’s peak time so joint staffing can be really efficient and so on.
“And with the growing number of farms getting involved in Pitch Up! it’s even easier to find the right kind of location for diverse businesses.”
Successful pitchers will join and work with businesses already focusing on a circular economy approach that ‘stacks’ enterprises to make the best and most sustainable use of the land including:
- Scotland the Bread, a collaborative farming, milling and bakery project to grow better grain and bake better bread with the common purposes of nourishment, sustainability and food sovereignty. It also supplies Baern Bakery at Bowhouse who specialise in naturally leavened bakes
- The Roaming Dairy, a mobile milking parlour, which enables cows to roam across pastures and be milked on location - improving soil fertility - and whose by-product provides The Roaming Smoker - an upcycled mobile meat smoker - with ‘old cow’ dairy beef from retired dairy cows, ensuring that nothing is wasted
- The Kinneuchar Inn, a field-to-plate pub and restaurant serving ingredients from the estate and East Neuk Market Garden, agroecological market gardeners
- Monch, a foraged sustainable pet food brand that encourages growth of the herbal leys and hedgerows supporting organic oat, quinoa and barley production and boosting biodiversity in successive reports
Tim May, managing director of Kingsclere Estates, who started the Pitch Up! scheme in 2021 said:
“Our goal is to have a diverse mix of enterprises all operating off the land – and using each other’s by-product or waste. Nature thrives on diversity; it also fuels economic resilience, helps create a closed-loop system, and builds stronger rural communities.
“If we as landowners can all share knowledge, experience and resources instead of duplicating work or making the same mistakes, it’s better for everyone – and we can grow the impact and opportunities much faster. There’s an increasing focus at government level on collaboration between farms – this is a collaboration that can have multiple benefits for both rural economies and the environment they depend on.”
Balcaskie Estate covers 4,500 acres in the East Neuk of Fife. With an organic and regenerative focus, farming practices include mob grazing, improving soil health, native wildlife conservation and the reintroduction of heritage breed livestock for a more sustainable future for food production and rural communities. At the heart of the estate is Bowhouse, a growing community of producers, which work to transform local ingredients into artisan food and drink. The Bowhouse Market Weekends have become a well-established fixture, welcoming around 4,200 members of the public every month.
The Balcaskie team is particularly keen to hear from those involved in pastured dairy and or poultry, leather processing and design and those who can make use of the organic grains grown on the farm.
Pitch Up! is open to all businesses and ideas at every stage of development; and the team is happy to work with people at the early/ proof-of-concept stage, or those further along their business journey.
Through Pitch Up!, Balcaskie and the other partner farms involved offer:
- Land – from small areas to larger rotational parcels
- Fertility – healthy soils and resilient, rotational pastures
- Production, storage and office space
- Roadside and/ or destination retail opportunities
- Economies of scale and infrastructure, access to machinery
- Business mentoring
- Low overheads, reduced risk and shared running costs
- Help with accounting, administration and marketing
- Access to industry knowledge and contacts from the landowners and the wider circular communities
The application guidance is online now at pitchupandgrow.com with applications open from 1st to 30th November 2024. Join the herd at @pitchupandgrow #pitchupandgrow