Interview: Steven Mitchell, farmer

COWS, sheep, goats, maybe the odd chicken or donkey – all are familiar sights on our traditional farms. But with the industry facing its biggest ever crisis, farmers are either selling up and moving on or seeking diversification – a unique selling point to give them an edge over the competition.

Some have started breeding llamas, for instance; others are trying ostrich farming or beekeeping. Apparently there's even a growing trend for worm farming – those little beggars must be a nightmare to milk.

But Steven Mitchell had bigger ideas. After three years at university and a year of travelling, he would have been forgiven for turning his back on the family farm in Fife and finding something more profitable to do with his time.

However, the 28-year-old invested his entire inheritance on Scotland's first herd of water buffalo. He jokes now that it was a moment of madness. "My uncle tried to persuade me to do anything else but farming," he says, "but it was in my blood. I'm the fifth generation of the family to be farming this land. My father died in an accident on the farm when I was a toddler, and I think that's where my love of the farm comes from."

After returning from a stint in Australia, where he had been designing websites, he faced a challenge. The horns of a dilemma, if you like. "I was hugely passionate about cows, but there were a lot of people out there producing really good beef.

I needed to find a unique selling point, and buffalo really interested me because of the health aspect. The meat is very low in cholesterol and saturated fat. The figures are almost unbelievably good."

In fact, according to the US department of agriculture, buffalo has the highest protein and iron value and lowest cholesterol, fat and calorific value of any meat, making it the ideal foodstuff for our lean, mean, health-conscious times.

Crusaders brought buffalo from Asia to Europe in the Middle Ages, and the animals are prized in Italy for the mozzarella cheese produced from their milk. But, though they had never before made their way as far as Scotland, buffalo are "amazingly well-suited" to our climate, says Mitchell.

"They love the summer for all the reasons we hate it – it can be hot and wet. And in the winter they are quite happy to come indoors."

Mitchell started off with 100 animals, and now has 400 – a large enough herd to attract the attention of a big cheese like Gordon Ramsay.

The celebrity chef came to the farm in 2007 while making an episode of his F-Word programme, and trialled the production of buffalo mozzarella. "That was a lot of fun and we made a really good product," says Mitchell.

"But if we were going to do mozzarella commercially, we would have to have a reasonable throughput; we couldn't just have it one week and not the next. I'm wondering where in the day we would fit in the milking. We're desperately keen to do it one day, though, and I'm sure there would be a demand for authentic Scottish buffalo mozzarella."

Now Mitchell is poised to become a media personality in his own right, with a regular slot on STV's The Hour. "They have asked me to do a diary for them on a weekly basis, to follow the ups and downs of being a farmer," he says.

Since Mitchell introduced water buffalo to his farm in Clemtrie, others have followed suit and the animals are now also farmed in Wester Ross and Aberdeenshire. And while the making of mozzarella on a commercial scale may still be some way off, Mitchell is focusing on making the existing business a success.

One of the bonuses of buffalo, he says, is that they are so similar to cows. "We are obviously marketing a completely new product, but we're not marketing new cuts of meat. The public are familiar with brisket, with silverside – it's all the same. At one time ostrich meat was going to be the new big thing, but it died away and I think that's because people might have been wary about how they were going to cook it, whereas I'm able to tell them to use the same recipes as they do with regular beef."

He also makes sausages and burgers, steak pies and mince. But what does buffalo meat taste like? "It's very similar to beef in terms of flavour," Mitchell promises. "In fact, a lot of people say it reminds them of how beef used to taste.

"It has quite a fibrous texture," he adds, "which lends itself to mince. I would personally have buffalo meat for my mince or stew before I'd have it from my Aberdeen Anguses; as for the fillet steak, I couldn't tell the difference. For sirloin, I'd stick with the Aberdeen Angus, but I have quite good cholesterol levels so can afford to be choosy."

www.puddledubbuffalo.co.uk

• This article was first published in The Scotland on Sunday, May 2, 2010