Andrew Melton and his father Clive are not the sort who rest on their laurels. From their base in Walpole Highway – just east of Wisbech – they have steadily built up their business and now farm 1620 hectares.

The enterprise started when Clive’s father Hugh began renting Pear Tree Farm in 1961 comprising 162 hectares – just a tenth of what they farm now. This land at Walpole Highway, plus about 20 adjoining hectares, is now owned by the family partnership H Melton & Son.

From a young age, Andrew – who is now 38 – had his sights set on farming. Coincidentally, he was an Olympic skeet shooter for Great Britain. He joined his father as soon as he left school and together they have built up a considerable amount of contract work as well as a precision farming business.

“In addition, to the 180 hectares we own, we rent land which we farm in our own right – so we’re farming around 315 hectares. Then we do contract work on about 1300 hectares. It started with a spraying contract but now we cover a whole range of services from stubble-to-stubble, fertiliser and ag chem applications to seed bed preparation,” said Andrew who is BASIS and FACTS qualified.

“Whatever service we are providing our aim is to treat other people’s farms as we would treat our own,” said Andrew.

On the home farm, where the land is suited to combinable crops, 179 hectares are given to wheat, 57 to winter oilseed rape, 46 to spring beans and 17 to sugar beet.

“The sugar beet is simply down to some quota we bought and the spring beans are grown for the human consumption market in the Middle East,” explained Andrew.

Given that much of the contract farming is on neighbouring land, cropping is much the same.

In addition to contract farming, the Meltons run a precision farming service for third party distributors and private farmers. The majority of work is to assess levels of potato cyst nematode (pcn), nutrition content and boundary mapping.

“Demand for pcn information is the greatest. But the need to know more about nutrition levels has grown as fertiliser costs have increased,” said Andrew. “We are all driving down costs and knowing exactly where the fertiliser is needed rather than doing a blanket application can be financially beneficial.”

Talking of which, the partnership joined Anglia Farmers in 2006. “We had never belonged to a purchasing group before and our decision was based on management purposes as much as cost saving,” said Andrew. “Because we are so busy we need backroom support. It’s working really well – it’s like having a personal secretary all the time. Whatever we need – farm security gates were a recent order - we just ring Anglia Farmers and then the quote comes through within hours. It’s brilliantly efficient.”

Beyond Clive and Andrew Melton’s manpower, the partnership employs three full-time staff as well as seasonal workers. The precision farming business employs two full-time staff.

Looking to the future, Andrew likes the challenge of producing food efficiently and believes agriculture will always survive. The question is will his own sons join him?

“They haven’t had the same opportunities I had as a youngster,” he said. “Because of health and safety regulations they cannot jump onto a tractor with me or my father. There’s no pressure on them though - time will tell if they share our enthusiasm.”