Emotions are running high here on our Moorlands farm this spring bank holiday weekend. Everywhere is dazzlingly green; the cows are out for summer, calves are being born at regular intervals and our milk production is up. This part of the country is rugged, both in its people and landscape. Lush pastures and farmsteads are never far from barren moorland and the rocky edge of the Roaches. We are on the southern tip of the Pennines – the backbone of England: you go from bleak to fertile in a matter of miles.
This contrast has echoes in our own feelings at the moment. We are privileged and blessed to live on a modestly sized farm, surrounded by beauty, doing a job that is as traditional and fundamental as it gets. At its simplest, we produce a staple food. But our existence is now as precarious as you can imagine. Only in the last few days, we have heard of three neighbouring dairy farmers selling their herds. Our corn rep was talking about it yesterday morning, telling us what we probably already knew – that the cows being sold would have very different lives from now on.
The cows are to be bought up and absorbed into big herds, perhaps approaching a thousand cows, and they will be housed inside all through the year. All this would have been unimaginable around here even in the recent past.
Not that things were necessarily better back then. A few years ago, farmers like us felt irrelevant – farming was of the past, and nationally insignificant compared to urban, “services industries”. That is no longer the case. No one argues any more that food production isn’t important. It is. But now we need a debate about the way that food is produced.
It is probably fair to say that the fate of the poultry industry and the strength of public feeling against intensive animal rearing has informed the attitude of big dairy herd owners – often commercial enterprises. They assure the consumer that though the cows are indoors all year round, they are kept in closely supervised and exemplary conditions. Yes, well, from what I’ve seen here on our own farm, cows like to go out in spring and graze. There are knock-on effects from this sort of dairy farming – what becomes of the slurry and its run-off? What quantities of fertiliser are necessary to grow enough grass to feed herds of this size? Surely this pressure on soil and animal is ultimately destructive.
Our cows live for years, and are not pushed beyond what feels right. Even as I write that, however, I smile at what the dairy consultants would make of such sentimentality. “You won’t be paid any more,” they tell us. “You have to get more lean and mean – send off any cow that isn’t producing enough and target your feeding, pushing your best cows.” That is the reality of an “efficient” dairy industry.
The price of a litre of milk has dropped about a third in the past 12 months, making small herds and small operations such as ours unviable, without getting deeper into debt. Hence the neighbours who are selling up, thinking “enough” and pulling the plug, as it were, on their bulk tanks.
The irony at the heart of this is enough to make you despair. As consumers we all want more traceable food; as a civilisation we have progressed enough to really care about animal welfare. Small and sustainable is so on-trend – whether it is farmers’ and makers’ markets, or a big move to growing your own and keeping a few hens for eggs. Yet, just as this is becoming fashionable, Britain’s small dairy farms are in danger of becoming history. The inevitability of the way we are going is both ruthless and bizarre.
But I still have hope. I think there is enough love for the environment, for the pastoral landscape, meadows and their wild flowers (especially bluebells at the moment), to make us wake up and see this peril for what it is. The commercial end of the dairy industry isn’t too bothered about butterflies and bluebells. All those things that lure us out to the countryside on a bank holiday weekend are tied up with how our land is farmed. The landscape as we know it and rural life as we imagine it is out there – but it is on shaky ground.
Other countries fight to keep what is irreplaceable. So must we.
Noreen and Brian Wainwright farm a 60-strong dairy herd on the Staffordshire Moorlands
Our cows live for years, and are not pushed beyond what feels right. Even as I write that, however, I smile at what the dairy consultants would make of such sentimentality. “You won’t be paid any more,” they tell us. “You have to get more lean and mean – send off any cow that isn’t producing enough and target your feeding, pushing your best cows.” That is the reality of an “efficient” dairy industry.
The price of a litre of milk has dropped about a third in the past 12 months, making small herds and small operations such as ours unviable, without getting deeper into debt. Hence the neighbours who are selling up, thinking “enough” and pulling the plug, as it were, on their bulk tanks.
The irony at the heart of this is enough to make you despair. As consumers we all want more traceable food; as a civilisation we have progressed enough to really care about animal welfare. Small and sustainable is so on-trend – whether it is farmers’ and makers’ markets, or a big move to growing your own and keeping a few hens for eggs. Yet, just as this is becoming fashionable, Britain’s small dairy farms are in danger of becoming history. The inevitability of the way we are going is both ruthless and bizarre.
But I still have hope. I think there is enough love for the environment, for the pastoral landscape, meadows and their wild flowers (especially bluebells at the moment), to make us wake up and see this peril for what it is. The commercial end of the dairy industry isn’t too bothered about butterflies and bluebells. All those things that lure us out to the countryside on a bank holiday weekend are tied up with how our land is farmed. The landscape as we know it and rural life as we imagine it is out there – but it is on shaky ground.
Other countries fight to keep what is irreplaceable. So must we.
Noreen and Brian Wainwright farm a 60-strong dairy herd on the Staffordshire Moorlands
Source: The Telegraph
