FORMER Okehampton College pupil David Cooper has been named as Young Farmer of the Year at the Farmers’ Weekly Awards 2016.

David, 29, who was born and raised in Okehampton, has farming in his blood. He is the son of John Cooper of East Okement Farm in Okehampton, and Sue Wonnacott of Wheatley Farm in South Zeal.

David attended South Tawton Primary School and Okehampton College before heading to Scotland at 17-years-old to begin work on his own farm.

But increasing his farm size from 190 hectares to 2,000 hectares and his flock size from 350 ewes to 3,000 breeding ewes is only really the start of his achievements.

David had worked on his family’s beef and sheep farm for years but when changes to the grazing rights on Dartmoor meant the family farm had 350 ewes needing a home, David was only too keen to be a part of the plan to start a new farm.

The family bought 190 hectares of dilapidated opencast mining land in East Ayrshire, Scotland, and David persuaded his parents to let him be the one to farm it. A lot of the land had not been grazed for years due to lack of fencing.

‘I couldn’t afford to pay anyone else to fence it, so I taught myself,’ said David.

This entrepreneurial spirit is one of the reasons it isn’t difficult to see why David won the the title of Young Farmer of the Year.

Faced with an issue, he not only took it on single-handedly to save costs, he then turned it into a successful business that he could run alongside the farm to help finance expansion.

He realised early on that when a large mob of his ewes with twins went into his smallest, two-hectare field, the grass improved dramatically. And now, in the summer, groups of ewes and lambs will be moved on a daily basis.

This is all part of his simple low-input and low-cost system. He has no feed costs, and only trace-element boluses are given to his sheep. He never breeds from twin ewe lambs because a single lamb will do much better in the hill farm environment. This system, combined with working alone with his dogs, only employing others for scanning and shearing, is very profitable.

David, who is married to Cora and has a 10-month-old son Lynton, is knowledgeable about the market and he targets Europe, particularly Italy, and sells through livestock marketing co-operative group Farm Stock.

‘I know Italy wants light, lean lamb. I know I have demand there, so that’s what I produce.

‘My principal vision is to make sure I leave my land in a better condition than when I started. I am a custodian for the future generation and must do everything I can to keep hill sheep farming alive.’

And that he has done, improving it so greatly that the land is now worth £500,000 more than when he bought it.