‘Aldi’s face of beef’ brings Dawtry Farm to Rodbaston College

In what will be the 100th year, Rodbaston College has been involved with delivering specialist agricultural and landbased training to the region, the college is thrilled to welcome supermarket chain Aldi’s ‘face of beef’ to run their onsite farm. 

Dawtry Farm, based at Rodbaston College is owned and run by the Wright family who have 5 farms within their portfolio. The family brings a wealth of knowledge and experience within dairy farming, suckler calf produce, beef finishing, sheep and forage crops having established their business back in the 60’s at the Homestead Dawtry Cottage, Four Crosses in Cannock. The farm at Rodbaston will grow grass, silage and forage maize, as well as being the new home to breeding heifers, feeding heifers, suckler cows, ewes and lambs.  

Matthew and Andrew Wright are former agriculture students at Rodbaston College, so the college is hugely excited to welcome the father and son duo along with their families back to Rodbaston. The family will run Dawtry Farm commercially from Rodbaston but will also share their wealth of knowledge and expertise within farming and agriculture with our students as well as provide invaluable work experience and learning opportunities for those aspiring for a career within the sector. 

The Wright family said,

‘The opportunity to farm at Rodbaston College was appealing to us because it is within local proximity to our current farming practices and also because we know the farmland lends itself to diverse use such as grazing livestock or growing crops – and we like that flexibility’. 

Claire Boliver, Chief Executive Principal at South Staffordshire College says, 

‘We are delighted to welcome the Wright family and Dawtry Farm to Rodbaston College. Having a commercially run farm on site, at the historic home of agricultural training in Staffordshire, will provide a wealth of opportunities for our students to learn the latest practices within the farming industry and provide valuable work experience to help our students, the next generation of farmers, to develop their learning through real life activities on a working farm’.  

Rodbaston College has been a training and learning facility for over 100 years, with specific expertise in delivering agriculture training. In 1921 it later became ‘Staffordshire County Farm Institute’ which was described by the Ministry report as a ‘leader in marking the fullest possible use of the resources of education for the benefit of agriculture and the agricultural community. Back then the farm was deliberately run on commercial lines, to provide a model for local farmers and workers to visit and at the same time, trials of new farming techniques, demonstrations of new fertilisers, and seed trials were begun. In 1967 it was later renamed the Staffordshire College of Agriculture before becoming Rodbaston College in 1994.