His business, based at Gisleham, near Kessingland, had been running at a loss and he couldn’t see things getting any better.
“We have not been making any money for about three or four years, and last year made a very big loss and that was the decider,” he says.
He keeps around 120 milking cows, in a herd which, including followers, numbers around 200. They will head to Bristol to be sold at auction on July 3. Two dairy workers will be made redundant.
The farm is a family affair and while he works the arable side, helped by his father, Bryan, it is his uncle, Neville, who has run the dairy for many years.
It brings an end to an era on the farm, as the Collens’ dairy becomes yet another depressing statistic for the milk industry in Suffolk and East Anglia as a whole.
“It will be part of our history gone,” says John.
Although milk volumes have increased in Suffolk since 2004, while reducing in Essex and Norfolk, the number of dairies has dwindled.
Their loss has been particularly felt in the Waveney Valley area, once a dairy stronghold, where John is based.
Although the farm is technically in the River Hundred valley in Suffolk, the area is part of a fertile green pastureland flanked on its northern side by the larger Waveney River, which is seen as part of the Waveney Valley. The Waveney runs from Redgrave on the Norfolk/Suffolk border and reaches the sea at Great Yarmouth, while the River Hundred takes a route south of the Waveney and flows into the sea at Kessingland.
Across East Anglia, the number of dairies in the East of England has fallen from 528 in September 2002 to 222 today – a 58% decrease. Suffolk has seen a dramatic reduction – 61% – over the last 10 years. In that period, 47 of the 77 dairies in existence in 2002 have disappeared. In Essex, the picture is even worse, with two-thirds fewer than a decade ago. In 2002, there were 64 dairy businesses in the county compared to 22 today. Cambridgeshire now has just seven. Norfolk had 122 producers in 2002 and now has 59.
John’s cattle graze both in the Waveney and the Hundred Valleys. The mainstay of his business is the arable side. He farms around 1500 acres, and contract farms around 15-1700 acres. But in spite of its diminishing value to the overall farming business, he has always kept the dairy, which is medium in size by average dairy standards, according to the National Farmers’ Union.
“We are absolutely one of the last in the Waveney Valley,” he says.
“If you look around the Waveney Valley area you’ll see eight out of 10 dairies have gone in the last five years because it’s not sustainable. The price of milk is low.
“You either get out or you expand big time.”
But in order to keep afloat and make the dairy business sustainable, the family believes it would need major investment.
John estimates they would need to spend around half a million pounds on modernisations and improvements to stay ahead of the game.
“Quite honestly, with milk prices where they are, even if the money was available to us, we would not be prepared to spend it,” he says.
“The big problem is the price of milk is not high enough.”
He adds: “We were lucky if you like that we had the arable end, that we were able to offset the losses or the lack of income for a longer period.”
To the west of the country, herd sizes are on the increase, he says, and this increasing trend is about economies of scale.
“The expansion of of herd size has been quite dramatic, especially in the west.
“They also have much lower feed costs because they are in the west and because their rainfall is much higher.”
He estimates dairy farms probably get twice the amount of grass in the west, which helps with feed costs, and they also have less ability in some areas to plough up their grass fields for crops, making more of it available, he says.
The Collen family started out as tenant farmers on the Somerleyton estate, but moved to Gisleham in 1962.
“One way or another we have had a dairy herd for about 60 years,” says John.
“The dairy is something we have been aware of for a number of years and while it wasn’t costing us money – it probably was, but it was not overtly costing us money – we wanted to stay with them.”
Sending the cattle away to be sold will mean the end of a way of life, and there is a sense of sadness on the farm.
“The plan is they will go down to Bristol to be sold by auction because we are on straw beds, not on cubicles, and many dairy farmers are now in cubicles,” he explains.
In the west, straw beds are more common – thus the need to transport the herd there for sale.
The Collens’ is one of the last Waveney Valley dairies to go. Although a few still battle on, many dairy farms have fallen by the wayside in north Suffolk, a traditional area for the sector.
John believes it is something that will never return to his farm.
His uncle, Neville, who runs the dairy, is now approaching 70.
“That’s one of the reasons we are taking the decision. He would like to carry on further, of course,” he says.
The National Farmers’ Union stresses that despite the numerical loss of dairy businesses, volumes of milk have not fallen by anything like the same amount, and there are positive stories of dairies which are diversifying and investing.
Families like the Strachans at Rendham, near Saxmundham, have added value to their milk by diversifying into making Marybelle ice cream, an increasingly popular local brand, and by becoming processors in their own right.
But Alex Butler-Zagni, a policy adviser at the NFU East Anglia Region office, says there are pressures on the industry, such as legislative burdens.
These include new and future legislative requirements, for which dairies will see no return on their business, but which require investment. Among these are rules around slurry and silage.
Also of concern is the domino effect of other dairies shutting on neighbouring farms, which makes the infrastructure around the businesses less viable. Milk buyers, for example, may be less willing to buy from an isolated farm out on a geographical limb.
“We find a lot of dairy farmers in East Anglia and Suffolk are often dependent on having a small cluster also in dairy. When one or two go, the remaining ones find it a lot harder,” he says.
“If your neighbours disappear, you find yourself a little more vulnerable, and your negotiating power diminished.”
In East Anglia, a herd of around 120/130 milking cows is what the NFU would expect to see he says. This is because it can take one person a morning to milk about 120 to 130 cows. More than that requires more staff. There are some larger dairies around the country, operating with five sets of 120 cows and these benefit from economies of scale, he says.
Milk prices are a problem, he admits.
“It’s very, very tight at the moment, and the forecast for the short to medium term is looking poor again,” he says.
“We have been on the bottom of the European Union (EU) league tables. We were in 27th place for the milk price farmers were receiving and we are in the bottom third consistently for the price farmers in the UK receive.”
The EU was trying to address this with a strategy which would include enabling farmers to come out of contracts with processors sooner if they want to, giving them more leverage to seek out a better price for their product elsewhere.
But there is a problem for milk buyers, who have too much capacity and need to find outlets, via supermarkets, for the milk they process. This is leading to low prices, explains Mr Butler-Zagni.
Processors like Dairy Crest, which recently announced proposals to shut its plant in Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, are feeling the pressure, just as farmers are. The milk supplier cited an “extremely challenging” milk market as a reason for its cost-cutting drive.
“It’s very difficult for them as well. Their margins are very low as well,” says Mr Bulter-Zagni. “Things have been tough for the dairy farmers, but also for the milk processors.”
But he adds: “Whilst we are seeing some farmers coming out of the industry, we are also seeing some really successful examples in the region with farmers doubling the herd size to 300. We have got lots of examples where we see the next generation and they are making that investment.”
The Strachans are an example of a dairy farming family which have sought their own solution to the problem of low prices.
Their family farm business is buying milk from a network of dairies and battling the effects of low prices through establishing its own brand and diversifying.
They set up their own processing plant in Walpole, near Halesworth, in 2001 and now its milk goes out to homes from North Norfolk to Chelmsford, supplying a network stretching out in a radius of 60 miles from the dairy.
They have also got an ice cream and yoghurt-making business, Marybelle, which has been going for about 25 years, and until recently was based at the family home.
It has now moved out to the dairy site with a view to expanding it in the future.
But, as farm manager and Marybelle sales and marketing consultant James Strachan points out, things aren’t easy.
“Partly we have done it by working for very little for the past 10 years, so there’s not a big amount of moeny to be made from it.
“It has been a bit of a passion, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.”
He adds: “The fact we are still here and have grown and developed the brand means we think there is a pretty big future now.”
But he admits it has been a difficult journey.
“In 2007, we started to see a good turnaround, then the recession hit. Everyone looked at prices again quite heavily. We managed to get through that.”
In the last six months, the farm gate price has gone up, he says.
“It seems we take one step foward and one step back,” he says. “We have chosen an industry that is extremely competitive and undervalued anyway.”
He feels, with the support of farmers and of consumers, the business has a good future.
“Now we have a six day a week network of deliveries so we can piggy-back those other products (ice cream and yoghurt) on,” he says.
It has been difficult to invest in the added value ice cream and yoghurt side, which accounts for around 15 to 20% of turnover because of the financial constraints caused by the recession, but it is the family’s ambition to grow the business.
It’s important to keep dairying in this area, he says.
“I think the consumers need to vote with their feet really. If they always go with the cheapest, the dairy farms will diminish and in this area particularly,” he says.
“We are already importing milk here and we need to get behind our farmers because once they are gone, they won’t come back.”
For the Collens, it appears there will be no coming back. The dairy is just no longer viable.
Its closure will mean the end of a way of life.
“Both father and Neville are very sad,” says John.
“It’s part of their lives and mine, but I’m a bit younger. It’s part of their lives being wiped out.
“Yes, of course farming is a business for us, but the overriding fact about farming is it is our living and our life.
“This is really wiping 60 years of history out.”
Source: EADT