Bude farmer Aaron Walter, 19, has a plan for farming’s paperwork

Nine hours. That is how long Aaron Walter reckons he spends every week on paperwork, and it is time he is not spending with his cattle.

Aaron is 19 and farms beef cattle near Bude in North Cornwall. He left school at 16 to farm. Now he has been picked as one of only 22 young people from across the UK for the Oxford Farming Conference 2027 Scholars Programme, and he has co-founded an app that aims to take some of that weekly paperwork off farmers’ hands.

One of 22 Oxford Farming Conference Scholars

The scholars programme runs from November to January. It includes a day at M&S head office in London, a day at Harper Adams, and three days at the conference itself in Oxford.

But it is the paperwork Aaron most wants to talk about.

More than a day a week at the desk

Cattle passports and movements, medicine records, Red Tractor, VAT. It all adds up to around nine hours a week for Aaron.

“That’s more than a day a week I’m not farming or earning, and it’s stressful too,” he said.

He points to RABI’s Big Farming Survey of more than 15,000 people, which found regulation, compliance and inspection was the most commonly reported source of stress among farmers.

What FarmHQ does

With his business partner Russell Brooks, Aaron co-founded FarmHQ, a phone app designed to keep a farm on top of its paperwork as it goes.

FarmHQ is a registered BCMS agent, so cattle births and movements are filed inside the deadlines. The app also keeps medicine records ready for a Red Tractor audit, sends the VAT to HMRC and gets the year-end accounts ready.

The farmer checks and confirms everything before anything is sent.

Seven farms are already using it, and FarmHQ is about to go live on the App Store and Google Play.

Why the timing matters

Only 6.8% of farmers in England are under 35, according to Defra figures from 2026. And Making Tax Digital brings quarterly tax returns to many more farmers from April 2027.

Aaron explains the app in his own words in short videos he posts from the farm, on FarmHQ’s Instagram reels and the FarmHQ YouTube channel.

📷Aaron Walter on the farm near Bude. Credit: Aaron Walter