OBITUARY: Akki Manson beef farmer and respected figure in farming industry
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The recent sad death of Alexander R (Akki) Manson of Kilblean, Oldmeldrum, at the age of 89, brought to mind his huge contribution to the beef industry, in the north-east and nationally, and the key role he played in a development in the early 1960s which revolutionised the beef industry.
This was the introduction of what became known as barley beef. Akki was the first farmer in the UK to try out commercially a concept developed by the cavalier scientist at the Rowett Research Institute, Dr Reg Preston – who later went to Cuba to work for the communist dictator, Fidel Castro – of feeding Friesian bull calves from the dairy herd on an intensive diet of barley and finishing them for slaughter at around a year old.
“It’ll never work”, said the Aberdeenshire cynics and self-appointed beef connoisseurs. Ye canna feed barley to cattle, they’ll dee, and naebody’ll want to buy the pale, lean beef that cattle killed at sik a young age will produce. They were wrong on both counts.
The received wisdom of the time was indeed that cattle would die if fed barley. But Dr Preston had worked out that barley only becomes toxic to cattle at around 18 months of age, and he reckoned that if you could feed a barley diet up to a year old, and produce a carcase acceptable to the market, there would be no problem feeding barley.
As Akki recalls in his memoir, which I’ve had the privilege of perusing, he and his generation had been brought up to believe that feeding barley ad lib to cattle would “guarantee death within minutes”.
Dr Preston didn’t have time to follow the normal convention of carrying out the initial research and, if it proved promising, get the North of Scotland College of Agriculture (now absorbed in SRUC) to carry out on-farm trials.
Much to the consternation of the Rowett hierarchy – and the wider research community – he went straight to Akki to try the feeding system, and arrange to have the resulting carcases assessed with a view to finding a market for them.
Akki quickly set up makeshift slatted accommodation on the neighbouring 60-acre farm of Scoutbog which he had acquired in 1961, and 80 dairy bull calves were installed on a self-fed diet of barley plus a protein supplement.
No bedding was needed as the cattle were on slats and, being on self-feed, the labour requirement was low. The cattle were finished at less than 12 months weighing 7-8cwt (350-400kg). Scoutbog became, in effect, the commercial demonstration unit of the Rowett.
The theory at the time was that it was a very efficient method of beef production, and that it would turn inferior animals into superior ones. As Akki writes: “We were going to find out!”
It has to be remembered that beef cattle in those days were not considered finished until they were getting on for two years of age, or even older, and were finished slowly on a winter diet of neeps and straw. Demand at the time dictated that they were not considered ready for the butcher until they carried a good degree of finish (i.e. fat).
Akki was soon to find out the beef from the first barley beef cattle was not even recognised as beef!
He tells the story of how the meat buyer from a leading supermarket, by that time looking to source leaner cattle to meet changing consumer demand, was appalled by the over-fatness of the carcase of the champion from the Aberdeen Fatstock Show, which was deemed, as champion, to be the epitome of what the market was looking for.
But Dr Preston and Akki were not for giving up. They could see the potential for the system, with the availability of both cheap barley and a plentiful supply of Friesian calves from dairy herds in England.
This was before the introduction of the more extreme dairy Holstein when the Friesian was still a very acceptable beef animal. Soon lorry loads of Hereford x Friesian and pure Friesian bull calves were rolling in to the north-east every week from England to meet the demand from beef finishers.
This led to the establishment of a cooperative, ABC (Aberdeen Barley Beef Cattle), to organise the supply of calves to farmers, make sure finished cattle met the spec and were not over-fat and regulate the flow of cattle to market, which Akki and his wife, Ethel, organised single-handedly in the early days.
Akki made it his business to learn as much as he could about the beef market and spent his life selflessly serving his fellow beef producers, going on to become chairman of Buchan Meat Producers Ltd, president of SAOS and chairman of the cattle committee of MLC.
