Seven years ago a very special sheep was born – with a strong will and ample confidence, she learnt from a very young age where to find the best grazing.

The natural constraints of hefted behaviour one would like to see in their hill ewes never applied to her. Her independence drove her into continued exploration of what lies beyond.

Fences and dykes did not matter, she always found a way into beautifully kept gardens. She would join the stud flock in deer-fenced fields, where she caused great irritation for 'The Boss'.

When she felt like it, she visited the bulls in their park where one could see her perched on a small knoll, with grown bulls sitting at her feet in seemingly unquestioned subservience. Herding her required major preparation, both mentally and emotionally.

Where other sheep saw defeat once cornered, she would walk away from a heated chase, leaving quadbikes overturned, dogs frustrated, and people less than impressed.

She would soon become known as ‘The Dodger’.

A solitary beast to begin with, she showed great dedication to motherhood and passed her knowledge onto her lambs. As a result of rearing mostly female twin lambs who appear to be equally successful at rearing lambs, it did not take long for her to amass a substantial and loyal following.

I tell this story because The Dodger has something that I feel is often left behind in the debate around connecting farm business profitability, ag-policy, and agri-environmental land management: Resilience.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘resilience’ as an ability to quickly recover after experiencing something challenging, and being able to return back to one’s original state.

When I say ‘challenging’ we might think of anything from bad weather, market shocks and political disruptions to a disease outbreak on the farm or the combine breaking down.

Farming businesses face challenges all the time, often simultaneously, and without resilience, many farms would not be able to survive shock after shock. That requires for a certain level of flexibility to be built into farm business management and planning so that we can be proactive where this is possible or reactive as a last resort.

Unfortunately, this is where it becomes a bit complicated when we talk about outcome-based support, or any form of support for that matter. The accompanying policy requires a means of ensuring compliance, preferably by monitoring and auditing the activities taking place on the farm.

Standardised on-farm management and streamlined reporting are undoubtedly desirable for government to ease the workload at their end – quite understandably.

But that goes against the very nature of farm resilience which relies on flexibility and adaptability, and sometimes requires for plans to be changed at short notice.

For example, if I have a bunch of less productive cows, I might want to sell them to improve my herd, business and climate efficiency, and am quite happy to accept a temporary reduction in herd size.

But if my support payments hinge on stocking densities, I would probably need to maintain stock numbers just in case the following year ends up becoming a reference year for future payments.

So my ability to drive my business forward is then stifled by justifiable concerns over losing out on essential income support which over several years will likely be greater than the obvious financial gains from culling poorer cows.

If policy remains too rigid in design, leaving little wiggle room for farms to respond to events in a sensible manner without the risk of losing out on future support, nobody truly wins.

We will simply end up with a support system that turns into a double-edged sword because businesses are inevitably held back and compromised in their ability to be resilient, which in turn makes them more reliant on support payments to survive and overcome shocks. This leads to a vicious circle where policy support becomes entangling and not enabling.

Farming businesses should be enabled to be a bit more like The Dodger, and policy should be designed in a way that can capture and deal with that. I’m not suggesting we want an industry full of awkward individuals, but certainly adaptive ones.

Why?

Let’s look at The Dodger again. She perfected the art of maximising her resilience. She demonstrated an extraordinary ability to adapt and improvise in an attempt to meet her nutritional needs.

She will travel across great distances in search of greener pastures, even if that means breaking into people’s gardens! She is a master of hide and seek in an attempt to protect her lambs from predation and other threats.

Ultimately, her behaviour ensures that her genetics are passed on and endure the test of time.

From a business and performance point of view, her ranging and roaming behaviour has resulted in her having a superior productivity compared to other hill ewes.

She carries good condition no matter how the season has been and as a result recovers much quicker from a hard winter, or poor summer without having to compromise on productivity because she has sufficient reserves to rear two healthy twin lambs.

Her environmental impact is minimal because she never has health issues and does not rely on being pampered and fed.

She is an outlier and, from a ‘streamlining’ point of view, we should probably sell her and her daughters for ‘easier management’. But even though she causes some extra work and demands a certain degree of creative thinking on our behalf, fact is, The Dodger and her crew are probably doing so much better BECAUSE they do not let themselves be constrained by a system constructed around them.

They have claimed the flexibility and freedom they need to be resilient and thrive, and we have adapted our management accordingly. So now, whenever we need to handle The Dodger, we open the garden gate. Once she’s in, we shut it. Job done.

Finding practical solutions can be surprisingly simple with the right mindset and does not require fancy flip-charts and corporate brainstorming, just a bit of imagination and a willingness to be flexible and meet somebody halfway.

I like to think that we will be able to design policy that encourages and enables farm business and nature resilience.

As for The Dodger, she is still going strong. I think ... I haven’t seen her for a while ...