It's a little bit chilly !!

Back home on the farm it has been difficult to get back in the swing of things- however, it seems that in general I am not needed around the place, except when bills are to pay.

The dairy herd has done tremendously well this year thanks to good management by the staff on farm and a better milk price from our milk purchaser.
We have supplied Caledonian Cheese Company in Stranraer for the past 3 years, they have been very good to us, but our payment this time last year was about 5ppl lower than it is now, this is a whopping £60,000 difference if applied to all our production.
The "swing" in price is something that seems endemic to the cheese price and so I have made the momentous decision to move away from this buyer and supply milk to Grahams Family Dairy in Stirling- the only thing is I need to change the breed of most of my cows from what we have now, Jersey x Holstein cows (see here)

To completely Jersey cows like these (but a bit better)

This change is all set for January so they will be settled in nicely before I head off on my next trip to India on my next Nuffield Trip.

I am really looking forward to supplying Grahams and I hope this is the start of a long and fruitful relationship for both companies.
www.grahamsfamilydairy.com

The end of the middle bit

I am writing the end of this travelog back in the UK.
Its funny how you can lose internet when travelling and then with all the best intentions completely lose time whne you return home.
The weather doesn't help so memories of warmer places come flooding back.
After my very tiring fly around the Lincoln University and Synlait milk plant in Canterbury, I spent a couple of well earner rest nights (and one day) in Christchurch.
I managed to meet up briefly with an old mate Andy Fox, I went to the Canterbury Show (met up with fellow Nuffield Arwyn from Wales who is still over there!!) and did a bit of culture seeing the Ron Mueck exhibition as well as a visit to the theatre. Excellent fun all round.

                                                   I resist the temptation for a joke. This is art.
After my little jolly in Christchurch ( did I tell you I love Christchurch?) I spun off down the road to Temuka to meet with David Ellis who has a large scale farming operation in the sensitive MacKenzie Country.
The area is of outstanding natural beauty and was used in the Lord of the Rings films. It is very much on the tourist trail but with a little irrigation this relatively cheap sheep grazing land can become very productive grazing.
An application has recently been lodged to build (shock horror) CUBICLE housing for cows in the area for about 18000 cows. This has caused a similar debate (or is that furore) to the one caused in Nocton. There seems to be a similar theme of farmers who for their own very good reasons are planning a big operation but are trying to impose it on a community rather than negotiate it in. There really is a lesson in public relations here.

                                          Look at this picture postcard view. Mackenzie NZ
After this I traveled down to meet Les Keeper a fellow Nuffield from a few years back. He has very conflicting ideas on NZ Dairy structure, and sold out his industry shares to invest in property in Queenstown; (a bit like Keswick only better) Sitting in his hot tub discussing the merits of his actions while looking over to some of the most expensive real estate in NZ I can't help thinking he may be right.

                                               Les lives in Queenstown- look at my little pot belly...
After leaving Les's millionaire pad in Queenstown I travelled back through some of the most stunning scenery in the world.
I arrived in time for tea at Desiree and Paul's house in Temuka on the East coast. I last visited this area 23 years ago and there are lots more cows there now. The average size of herd in NZ is now 300 cows but many in the South Island are well over this. Des and Paul have big plans to increase their herd and buy more farms... they are doing a great job so far.
Des took me to meet other farmers in the area including her Dad who has a very tidy operation in partnership with another couple the farm was brand new and was very professional. He is also a very clever inventor... I must remember to ask about his electronic ID kit. The prototype in his garden looked a little like a clothes dryer , but it seemed to work well at a fraction of the price.
Andy and Rachel Morris had worked their way from very little to owning 2 herds of cows each about 400 cows. They got there via hard work on hill stations, joint venture with sheep and beef, selling shares in businesses at a personal loss, but all in the name of moving forward at all times. They are an inspiration and are currently working on ideas to help water management, which will improve farmers efficiencies as well as their image!

Andy Palmer who lives on Muff Road (why did I remember his address) is also working hard to improve farmers image by planting natural vegetation back onto parts of his farm not used for grazing.
My time in NZ is nearly up, and so is this part of my Nuffield Research (I know it looks like a jolly, but honestly....)
Thanks to Des and Paul, Les, Sarah, Andy, Andy, Andy, David and The Court Jesters.

My Favourite City

If you speak to Liz she will probably tell you how much I go on about New Zealand. But, I can honestly say that Christchurch New Zealand is my favourite place in the world.
I flew down here on Thursday as part of the World Dairy Summit to look at a modern milk powder plant(you can see why it might sound boring but was in fact very interesting) Synlait was set up by a group of farmers to vertically integrate their 4000 ha dairy farm which has 14000 cows. The plant makes baby milk and colostrum powder amongst other things. If you remember I tried a colostrum tablet in China- this is probably where it came from. The company has now been bought out 51% by the chinese- is there a reverse takeover of NZ??

Exciting picture of milk plant

Next was Lincoln University where a coalition of most of the major research persons, supply companies and farmers (yes proactive guys that they are) have got together to create the South Island Dairy Development Company which does lots of research on a commercial basis on a farm owned by the University with 800 cows.

Dairy Farmers in Canterbury have a bad image problem as the local townspeople and some sheep and arable farmers blame them for polluting rivers and using too much water on farms. "Dirty Dairy" is a campaign against them initiated by the hunting and fishing lobby.

The research farm makes money for the University (apparently quite a bit) and the research is helping the farmers image in the area by proving that they don't pollute rivers.

I have been staying in Christchurch the past 2 nights, the weather is fantastic and I have been having some time off- not that it has helped with the bags under my eyes, this traveling is very knackering.

Meeting 2 old friends

On Sunday I flew south to meet 2 old friends
I visited New Zealand in 1988; that is so long ago, and it was a great feeling seeing the sunny pastures unfold beneath the plane. I love this place.
The second old friend was Christine Armstrong who between us we agreed I had not seen for 15 years. OMG!!
Christine showed me some of the delights of Sunday evening Auckland- and she hasn't changed a bit, what a laugh we had.
Typically we said we would leave the pub when the band played a rubbish song, unfortunately this was not until about 2am- the conference is not going to be easy tomorrow.

Sky Tower and Auckland Skyline

The conference was in fact much bigger than just a conference it was the World Dairy Summit at the Sky Tower Convention Centre which is attended by 2000 of the worlds top dairy persons- and me.
Topics under discussion were environmental impact, financial stability of markets, sustainable systems and when is the next round.... sorry, I mean networking session.
Monday:
The first session was the World Leaders Forum where 6 of the worlds leading dairy contributors discussed topics around farming, processing and environment. The discussions were well run by a local media star who kept the session lighter than may have been he case otherwise.
I'm not sure I heard anything new but it is clear that everyone is optimistic for world dairy trade- try telling that to the UK processors!!
At lunch I met with Tim Deane at Fonterra the company that processes and sells more than 80% of New Zealands milk.
I asked whether Fonterra used the image of green free range milk from New Zealand to sell milk overseas, Tim thought it helps them get a hold in certain markets; particularly China, but ti does not help to command a price advantage.
He said the company did not support the use of feed lots in sensitive parts of New Zealand and ruled out their use in other areas due to competitiveness. He didn't seem to think that there was a link to the feed lots being built in China by Fonterra.
In the evening I had a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture for New Zealand Hon David Carter- what a good guy- and so very approachable. I had been allocated a half hour meeting so I quickly got into questions for my study about what the govt of New Zealand thought of some issues around the perception of Dairy Farming in New Zealand and of their products around the world. He comes across as pragmatic and very supportive of the image of farming in his country. He was also of the view that a move to more feeding of cows away from pasture was an inevitable part of the growth of NZ Dairy. After our meeting I was invited to join the Ministers party at a drinks reception at the museum of boats (actually called the maritime museum- someone must like it??)

The first pastoral robotic milking unit in NZ

Tuesday:

Was "lets get out in the sun day" or more formally known as the farm tours.

We visited a research farm run by Dairy NZ to see demonstrations on effluent spreading- I was here 25 years ago and it has moved on very little. A paddock of weeds, sorry chicory and plantains was being touted as the next big thing... sorry it just doesn't look like the levy is being well spent here.

Next, was a robotic system for grazing cows which was a fantastic looking place (see above) but, spending nearly £250,000 on a unit for 95 cows when down the road there are units of 1500 cows or more and the average herd in NZ is 300 cows just doesn't stack up for me.

At our final farm, a well run environmental farm in the middle of the biggest swamp in NZ was very good, but again we were told that grass was the cheapest form of feed, compared to other feeds like palm kernel costed at $400NZ. But, what an embarrassment for DairyNZ- when asked by an Aussie what was the cost of grass then? No-one had an answer.... ooops.

And Tim makes 4

Back to Sydney.
Weather still rubbish- I have come to Australia in the coldest spring for years. Should have planned to be north for the weather, but still having fun.
Today Tim has arrived (thats Tim Bennett Chairman of DairyCo) he is here to present a speech at a conference entitled "Issues Management" he's here with Michael Lambert who is a great guy and a director of Worldwide Sires.
The conference was really interesting and on topic for my Nuffield Study (see I am doing some thing towards it) there were speakers from around the world.
It appears that many countries have very similar issues affecting them which the rest of the population (or maybe just pressure groups) have a problem with.
The main ones are

• Environmental issues (pollution and habitats) 
• Animal Welfare (including practices such as inducing, de-horning late, lameness and housing)
• Fat in milk
• baby calves-and what we do with them

It was heartening to see that farmer organisations around the world are all working towards helping to support the image of Dairy whatever system or size you happen to be. Mike from Northern Island Dairy Council- you are a star!!

Dinner was in darling harbour hosted by the inimitable Jim Begg from Dairy UK. 

An account of the evening is available on his blog

http://www.dairyuk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=260&Itemid=342

The funniest thing was seeing the big guy lose his glasses off the end of his nose into his fish chowder, his expression will stay with me for some time to come.

The following day Tim had organised for us all to travel south to see some farming in NSW, we visited some wonderful farms one of which had the cleanest milking parlour and yard I have ever seen (mental note for home) the Aussies are really good at mixing grazing with feeding, and are very keen on helping with succession.

Tim Burford, Tim Bennett, Michael Lambert and Karen Wannacott talking triple cropping with Santiago (great name)

The trip also included a visit to the University of Sydney to see work on double and triple cropping systems; it must be nice to grow maize, kale and barley in the same year..... thanks to Tim Burford who must have had matchsticks holding his eyes open by the time he dropped us off in Sydney centre.

On Friday I had organised to see a small version of the Nocton Dairy type of system run by Michael Perich (his family are building a town ?? Why does he farm cows?)

This farm was 2000 cows and if this is how big this type of farm is then Nocton will be amazingly huge. The area this farm filled was amazing. 

There were 4 sheds of 500 cows like this with exercise lots between

Michael was very open, and I really enjoyed seeing the farm; the cows were very happy and well looked after, but I have to say the scale of this would be difficult to neighbour. I can see why the little village of Nocton might be worried by something 4 times the size.

Michael let his cows graze when dry and two interesting facts were

• The economies of scale are lost after 1000 cows
• Labour and management time are the hardest parts of a large scale operation.

grazing cows on Perich farm- look at the length of the grass

The Perich farm produces milk for a2 milk which is milk containing only a2 protein. His cows are selected to produce this special milk and he is paid a premium for it. The milk is sold as a "Healthy alternative" to normal milk. This is interesting given that the system of production would be contentious in the UK by a certain group of consumer and in Oz it produces a health drink for a similar demograph of consumer.

Circular quay

Another funny incident straight out of an english sit com was a little R&R that the gang of 4 from DairyCo did on Saturday before we all left for NZ. See that big boat on the harbour above? We thought we'd booked on one of these and it pulled away to reveal a tiny little yellow boat which fitted about 8 people which was actually our boat, we went for a cruise in Sydney harbour and it rained so hard we could barely see a thing- maybe you had to be there but I could only laugh.....

Cool town Melbourne

The DairyCo mini-tour of Victoria started really early on monday morning, the cool town am referring to is the 6 degree temperature which was not expected, Dr Wannacott and myself were feeling a little chilly as we made our way by car to Dairy Australia HQ in downtown Melbourne.
We were on our way to meet Julie Iommi whose exotic name defies the fact that she is a highly motivated english rose who used to work for the NFU.
Julie arranged for us to meet an array of people who work in or around Dairy farmers in Australia.
She first gave us a rundown on what Dairy Australia do and how they work through a plethora of farmer related anacronyms a worrying spiders web of dairy farm related organisations materialised which must cost a fortune in administration, and dairy farmers in the UK worry about our lost money!!
This aside the gang at Dairy Australia do very similar work for farmers as DairyCo in the UK and I was pleased to see that they feel money is better spent supporting farmers image as opposed to generic advertising- this could be described as a meeting of minds.The main difference between the British Levy fund and Oz is that they have at least 3 times as much to spend as we do!!

Countryside near Melbourne

We met the guys who actually put calves into schools across Australia to promote farming; it works for them, but can you imagine the risk assesment for that in the UK?
There is a big emphasis on nutrient budgetting, carbon footprint and greenhouse gases- in fact the same issues as back home.
Cathy Phelps the greenhouse guru (the Dr Wannacott of Dairy Australia) tried to tell me that cow poo in a field is the same as cow poo in a slurry pit; the guys at the next visit to Ellinbank research institute restored my faith by explaining that collected poo creates methane in the pit until it is spread whereas cows who poo in the field stop producing it almost as soon as they poo. This may sound really boring to you readers but, to me this is pure gold- How sad am I??
Ellinbank spends lots of time, effort and money feeding different food additives to cows to see if they fart more or less; I am sure the guys there would like me to describe this more scientifically but to me this is what it looked like. Dr Wannacott may be able to give you the more scientific explanation.

Dr Wannacott in a fart machine- honestly!!

We now travel down to Gippsland to stay with an Aussie Nuffield called Graeme Nicholl, what a great guy and what a lovely family. We sat up reasonably late (considering how tired we were) for supper and a discussion on carbon; this appears to be the trouble when traveling with a greenhouse gas expert.

Tuesday morning was really cold, but the sun was out. We looked around Graemes farm, which is based on really lovely farmland carved out of the bush by his grandfather; those old immigrants from the UK really worked hard in colonial Oz. Thanks again Graeme for your hospitality.

you can see how wet it has been in Victoria behind me

On our way back to the airport Graeme had arranged for us to visit a couple of farms one with 1000 cows on a pure pastoral system, thanks for letting us look around Max (the inventor)

Peter Notman was a real interesting chap who has built a one man farming seed and extension service along with his lovely wife and family. what a guy.

The day was very finely timed and I'm sure Karen was as impressed with my rallying skills as I was with her navigating skills.

P.S I hate Hyundai Getz

Down Under

Arriving in Australia I am pleased I did not ditch some of my warm clothes in China- the weather is unseasonably cold and wet.
My first problem was a lack of hotel as staying in Hong Kong an extra day caused them some confusion, even though it was all paid up front they cancelled my room. 11.30pm on saturday night is not a good time to find a room.
My first day in Sydney was spent catching up on ...stuff!
I also managed a quick trip to the theatre to see a british theatre company 1927 who gave an excellent presentation of "the animals and children took to the streets"

                                                   cheesey grin

Tomorrow I am heading to Melbourne with Dr Karen Wannacott to meet with farmers and farm organisations.

A spell in Hong Kong

A quick stopover in Hong Kong with my old mate Michael Hope and his family turned quickly into a short (and much needed)break of two nights.I always thought that Hong Kong was just a big city perched on a rock. it turned out to be a really beautiful island destination, with beaches, inlets, islands, sun, disney and fantastic shopping, as well as some of the best food ever (or was this just a relief after eating.. anything in China.

                                               Hong Kong fishing village

Michael, Jill, Jack and Max looked after me really well- a great impression of their great city and a really welcome rest before heading off to Australia.

Going down?

The next stop on the Nuffield UK China Group trip was Guangdong province. We flew into Guangzhou to stay the night in a rather orange hotel.
Guangdong province is right at the bottom of China and has a tropical climate.
it has always been the gateway to trade with the west, it is joined to Hong Kong which was under UK control until 1997.
The recent economic boom in China began in this province and during our stay we met one of this areas entrepreneurial businessmen- Micahel- What a star! He could hardly contain his energy as he showed us around his factory, which made anything out of tarpaulin material from bbq covers to building covers!! Quite a guy and it was clear that in this region anything is possible.
We got a feel for the kind of commerce that happens in China with a hint of corruption thrown in; My stay in Hong kong later confirmed that back handers are often the way t get ahead.
While in Taishin city we were the unlikely stars of the school curriculum, we were split into twos and rather unprompted were expected to take an English class to 13-14 year old students from one of the areas top schools; I now admire schoolteachers even more- although a little bit of lesson planning might have been useful. I'm not sure how useful my sketches of cows and pigs might be to the future of  China or Helen's description of pigs ears and tails sent from britain to China- how kind we are.
Never the less we seemed to make an impact.

                                                             your unlikely teachers today are....

We visited some wet markets in this area, if ever you need a bunch of frogs (tied up by the legs and alive) or a cute kitten in a kitten sized cage this is the place to visit.
Meat is kept fresh by the means of pure luck- chicken is kept fresh by being alive!! We are sure we saw a skinned cat.... but hey this is how it is, but it did put me off my lunch a little.

                                                   I wont trouble you with the close ups!!

We visited what can only be described as a peasant farming village- although this is a bit unfair as they had mobile phones; how can his be a priority when you cant afford a bathroom.
This gave us an insight into how most of China still farms. After the cultural revolution of Chairman Mao each person in China was allocated a plot of land about 2 acres in size.
This still exists today and to be honest the farmers get very good productivity from this land earning about £800- £1200 from their allocation a year.
Many subsidise their incomes from handouts from more successful family members.
We saw the most awful pig farm, and a really clean one.
We saw peanuts; why did i not know they grew underground, how did that pass me by?
We saw hundreds of ducks packed onto a small piece of land; at least in the UK they would be hidden in a shed!!
All in all my general impression of this type of farming is that it is unlikely to be a threat to farming in the west....yet.

                                                    some sort of farming sharabang

Quote of the day- Bulls**t

Friday evening was hosted by James Su Hao who helped us with plans for Hohhot and kindly offered to speak to us and buy us dinner. He spoke to us at our induction in Washington, and has grown his company from relative poorness to current multi- skilled group organisation.
East Rock amongst other things makes Hunter wellies, cow and horse mats and  currently builds dairy farm infrastructure for the growing dairy industry, based around large scale American operations.
He is a very interesting bloke who has travelled an interesting road from a poor rural family to a protesting student (he was thrown out of university for his involvement in the Tiananmen Square protests) to a highly conservative businessman steeped in capitalism.
He told us about how the melamine scandal came about in china when poor farmers added melamine to their milk to boost their income, given that these guys have two cows and an income of about £240 per year its not surprising, however this literally killed lots of children and seeped confidence in the dairy industry away.
Chinese people are to some degree conditioned and are very trusting of what they are told by their government. When I asked James about the images of grass fed cows used in the dairy advertising he said “This is bullshit!!” it appears that the government has backed this approach and the general public are now satisfied that  milk is now safe; however I am not convinced that they are.
Milk will be increasingly produced in large scale feed lots and the dairy companies are looking to be rid of the poorer small farmers because they are extremely inefficient and cannot be trusted to produce quality milk.
James treated us to some of the best chinese food I have ever tasted- what a difference to lunch, and also a taste of the new breed of chinese business men

We then visited the great Wall of China and all those touristy things around Beijing. incredible we went up to the wall by cable car; but even more amazingly came down by a louge slide!!

Back to Beijing

Communism as told by metal stick lady (dominatrix of the year 2009)
After a bit of a debate (which ended in crushing poor Clare’s dreams) we moved to Beijing by plane rather than the Doily Train.
This meant we had time for an extra visit arranged by the ever helpful James Su-Hao who we were booked in to meet later.
This visit was a guided tour given by a very scary leather clad lady with a metal stick, around what can only be described as “the workers republic of building a better life from poverty to percieved middle classness in a very organised Chinese way”
Let me tell it in story fashion…
“Once upon a time in a small and very poor village near the edge of Beijing, a man had a dream. I want to help my friends to become more comfortable and happy, he said.
So, with the backing of his local government he persuaded the whole village to build a new life by giving up their silly agricultural ways (which had only made them poor) and building a completely new village and a big building company to help China to rebuild everything.
In this new village everyone would work for the company and build…stuff, everywhere.
They would be happy or else they would have to leave.
The End.”
It wasn’t my favourite place but it gave a good insight into how this particular village had bettered itself and although we didn’t see many people I don’t think they were that happy.
The highlight of the visit was our country style lunch which was a huge table full of minging food the most memorable was a chicken which looked like it had been passed whole through a tennis racket on its way to the pan, only a welsh man could bring himself to eat the head of a chicken- well done Tony my son.

The Hutongs (someone tell me there isn’t a band called this)
A traditional Courtyard Hotel in the famous Hutongs of Beijing was our next stop after our lovely lunch and my treat for the Nuffield travel group.
First reactions after the bus negotiated the rather shabby back streets of downtown Beijing to reach a litter strewn and cat ridden hotel was sheer horror (and I think this was the final straw for James who had been having trouble with his body clock, which I think broke entirely at this point) No, 5 star luxury here, but after settling into the rooms it was actually very clean, comfortable and impressively quiet given the location in the heart of the capital, but once out of into the streets it would be difficult to think a young lady would feel safe walking back, in fact our transport gave up trying and picked us up some way from the hotel. A bit like choosing a Best Western in the middle of Kings Cross.

                                                                    great wall

Would you like your milk shaken or stirred Mr Bond?

We moved from ZhengZhou which is in the middle of China up to Hohhot, this is the Capital of Inner Mongolia.
Inner Mongolia (apart from sounding like somewhere completely in the middle of nowhere, which it is) is a special administrative zone in China, which I take for meaning it was at the edge of China and difficult to govern- but hey I’m just a dairy farmer, what do I know about communism!!
It was a great relief to get out of the smog and general dirtiness of Zhengzhou and into the fresh air and high skies of this mountainous region.
You may have noticed that this is written in past tense I gave up trying to upload any sort of blog- the internet is a bit difficult in China- facebook is not allowed, what’s that all about? It’s like someone blocking you big style.
We went to Hohhot to look at the burgeoning dairy industry and the sheep industry.
First stop was Yilli Dairy which is one of two very large dairy companies based in this region. Yilli have big ambitions and as they showed us a model of their plans it was clear that they have only just begun, their scale model was huge and the very new factory we were hosted in was only a tiny corner of their plans. These plans included a small city to house their staff. It was sort of like Ice Cream world- you could imaging the CEO of Yilli sitting in his office stroking a fluffy white cat- "Would you like your milk shaken or stirred Mr Bond??"
Seriously, at face value this operation means business and with the government of China a major shareholder in the organisation it has serious clout, and given that they have staff motivational posters which say (this is paraphrased) "Keep your head down and work" they know how to make their staff work hard.
Their operation is designed to produce milk powder, yoghurt and ice cream very efficiently to supply markets in the affluent eastern coastal regions of China.

Dairys imagery

I was very interested and heartened to see that they produce milk from grass, at least looking at ALL their imagery and promotional material around the whole production plant and even on billboards around the country this company screamed "Fresh milk produced by cows in the countryside" Brilliant, a model for he future- large scale dairy production, sustainable, fresh, grass based, this could be a model for the world which will make farmers rich and keep the animal rights campaigners happy…. Hmmm is this too good to be true??
When we visited a dairy farm later that day it was definately not grass the were eating, but in its own way the farm was producing milk with about 300 cows in a very similar way to many in the UK but definately not using grass- only maize silage, hay and concentrates.

More about Chinese Dairies later, anyway when we were up in Inner Mongolia we also saw some sheep, we actually ate quite a few of them as well ……. Please refer any questions to Tony Davies or Arwyn Owen who live in Wales need I say more.(sorry guys)
Best thing in Hohhot- The friendly people showing us around and translating for us, thank you Amanda and Co.
The worst thing in Hohhot- Milk (pronounced Meeook) Tea, which is made with salty milk and has bits of yucky stuff floating in it, the nearest thing to being sick backwards I can imagine.

A Bit of censorship

It seems that the internet is not as easy in China. But, I have found that this terminal can do this blog.
The first 2 days in China were spent in ZhengZhou (Chengchou) where we visited an agricultural show- I maybe haven't said but there are 7 of us (+ 1 on her own trip at present) visiting China for our Nuffield Scholarships for 10 days.
The show was very interesting, but like any show in the world you can get a bit weary after a while.
The exhibits were mostly of food from the various provinces of this vast country. Which range from fruits (some wierd) to my favourite; Dried yak meat mmm yummy.
Colostrum sweets were also a major treat.
The most compelling thing in Zhengzhou was the almost oppressive smoggy polution which obscured the sun.
A visit to a huge outdoor concert of singers, karate kids and zen masters telling the tale of a Chinese proverb was an incredible spectacle which rounded off our tour here.
My take home message from this province... this country is just huge.
We have now moved North to Inner Mongolia and the profesionalism shown by our hosts, and the crisp sunshine is a welcome reprieve from smoogy old Zhengzhou- more later.....

From Beijing to Guangdong

I have just arrived in Bejing. This is the largest airport I have ever seen!!
I will be travelling tonight to Zhengzhou where I will be attending(and actually exhibiting- strangely) the largest ag show in China this year.
Jim Baird and I are doing a bit of a Dairy show while Tony Davies attempts to sell the Chinese mutton. Maybe no harder than in UK though!!
It has been a weird journey so far including a chance meeting inNewcastle which ended up in an upgrade to 1st class travel, too many airports, a choice of normal or longdrop, confusing wifi and chewy dim sun.
Tomorrow will be manic and more uk nuffieldscholars arriving!

BBC Look North- Just look at these cows!!

 My Cows are now stars!! Not so sure about the bloke with the mad staring eyes!!

TV Star!!

One thing that keeps cropping up when investigating what people think about how milk is produced is animal welfare.
One thing is true; if you do not look after your cows health they will not produce milk.
Welfare although linked to health is a slightly different thing- how can i tell if my cow is happy?
This week Karen Lancaster from DairyCo came to teach me about Cow Signals. This is a way of seeing if your cows are happy by checking various "signals" like how many cows are lying down in cubicles, if any have bruised hocks or even something called dancing cows (which is a cow standing on here own moving her weight from one foot to another.
The worst thing about all this was that I ended up on TV and Radio locally looking for all intents and purposes like a startled rabbit.
I must investigate Cow Signals further as it could be a way to measure how happy your cows are whichever system of mangement you use.
One thing I did learn- I need media training!!

A meeting with the other side.......

It is a little unfair to describe World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) as "the other side" but to be honest most farmers would see them as that.

I met with Phil  Brooke at Compassion in World Farming earlier this year and after I saw a stunt in London with guantanamo cows i looked up WSPA. WSPA are the guys who are currently running a campaign called "Not in my cuppa" which is where I named this blog from. Their campaign is aimed squarely at large herd developments in the UK and specifically Nocton Dairies which they do not want to see built especially because they are based in the UK (Not in My Back Yard!!)
To be fair they are fairly supportive of "traditional farming" and have a good handle on dairy farming practices in this country.
As they are happy to see farmers grazing cows this means they are relatively happy with about 80% of the dairy faerms in the UK at present, but if you have a system based on total confinement of cows then their campaign is aimed right at you!!
This might be seen as a little unfair as there may be a number of reasons why a farmer will keep his cows inside- weather, grass growing conditions, robotic milking systems etc- and as we know all dairy farmers need to look after their cows well or they will not produce any milk.
As I explained in previous blogs I run a dairy herd where we graze grass as much a possible so I know from talking to WSPA that their campaign is not aimed at the way I manage my herd of cows- but if you look at their website www.notinmycuppa.com I struggle to see whether they show any differentiation on the front page in particular, The website is even using images of cows in fields with the banner not in my cuppa- talk about a mixed message!!

If consumers are unaware of how milk is produced (and I know that they are as I have asked them) then a casual look at this website would not tell you anything other than you should not drink milk that is "factory farmed" (and without getting into the issue of if milk is even factory farmed at the moment) consumers cannot choose their milk, unlike their eggs, on the sytem that it is produced under. In my view their campaign, if succesful, will only reduce demand for ALL milk produced in this countryIt is unlikely that WSPA will ever support large scale dairies, but in the meantime I would like them to consider the following:
* If you support what I do on my farm then show that you do
* If you want consumers to choose milk from a particular farming system you support than you would be better to campaign for labelling of milk rather than reducing milk consumption because this is more likely to affect the people you would hope to protect!!
After my meeting I came away happy that the WSPA  know about farming and are not talking out of their backsides!! But, I am concerned that their campaign against Large Scale Farms (which in a free society they are more than allowed ot do) will only damage an industry which has only just begun to be profitable again.
The risk for WSPA is that their campaign will put out of business the smaller dairy famrers that they say they support!! The words baby and bathwater come to mind.........

PR for Dairy

I visited Nexus on Tuesday lunchtime, Nexus are the company currently employed by DairyCo to conduct consumer research and manage the current campiagn designed to inform consumers about how milk is produced on farm. There is a website www.thisisdairyfarming.co.uk which is designed to inform and defend dairy farming. some interesting new Moovies (lol) are going live this week which show different diary systems in action.
Amanda Ball was also there and we had a very tasty lunch (Amanda liked mine so much she ate some of it!!) We discussed current trends and it is clear that farmers have a long way to go to inform the general public about how they produce milk, and given what I learnt at Dairy Crest yesterday the sooner we start the better.
Nexus also work with the egg industry and there are some interesting and rather confusing messages from what has happened in the egg market which could be lessons for the dairy industry.
Here are some observations about eggs.
* Eggs are sold by the way they are produced e.g caged, barn, free range and organic
*Eggs are labelled by method of production, farm they were produced on and country of origin across europe
* UK eggs are also labelled with a Lion Brand which is a bit like Assured Dairy farms but stricter and this also has a best before date
*Nearly 50% of the retail egg market is free range and this is growing by 10% per year
*Caged egg market is shrinking- but this may be arrested by the introduction of enriched cages
Eggs are in the same "basket" at a supermarket, and are seen by the consumer as something similar.
When I was at Dairy Crest the other day we discussed briefly "local Choice" milk which was a brand of milk sold in supermarkets for a premium because it was sourced locally. It failed because consumers believed their milk was local anyways not because they didn't like local milk.

Look, milk is produced in fields!

If consumers also believe that milk is produced in fields of grass then how confused will they be when they find out it is not necessarily so.
Here are a few milk facts
* 80% of milk is produced with grass in the cows diet (Free range?)
* Tankers collect mik from farms with dedicated supermarket supplies (Dairy Crest do this for M&S and Waitrose- Arla and Wiseman for the others)
* All Dairy Farms are audited by Assured Dairy Farms
The above facts could be used to go some way to labelling milk in the way that eggs are to reassure the public of its origins and give them choice about which milk to buy.
This way no producer should be ashamed of the way they produce milk or feel disadvantaged by any other production method, if the farmer chooses to produce milk in a certain way he can be assured that the buying public know what he does.
I am off to World Society for the Protection of Animals tomorrow, I am going with a little bit of trepidation........

Blissfully unaware

I am in that London place meeting various persons (including the
chinese visa people), today I visited the very nice people at Dairy Crest
in Esher.

They have an interesting position in the market and maybe have to think with
two brains as they deal on one side with farmers who supply them quality
milk and on the other supermarkets who are their customers. I think
they do a very good job of this balancing act.

What they do was summed up very concisely in this statement "We take
quality milk and add value to it" which I thought was a perfect
description of what they do.



It was interesting to see that they find different concerns at these two poles
of their business, but both ends are price sensitive and both ends have different views of what milk production is like. .



As you will see in my last blog, I am not sure that consumers care about
where their milk comes from initially, but when pressed show concern for animal
welfare and think that milk production involves fields and grass.

This is the view of Dairy Crest too, in fact they may go further to say that when pressed
consumers have a much more romantic view of milk production involving flat
caps and farmers with walking sticks,  so me being me says, does
this mean that if there are units producing milk in a more intensive way across
the country, then this must mean the consumer is in denial- No, the
reply, they are blissfully unaware which is different; If they were in
denial they would know about how milk is produced but put it to the back of
their minds.



Now then, this might be a good thing, in a "what they don't know won’t
hurt them" kind of way, but is it a good long term plan for our industry
to perpetuate a romantic myth about milk production, and it also implies that
farmers are ashamed of how they produce milk- which i for one am not.



On wednesday I am meeting with "the other side".

World Society for Protection of Animals recently held a stunt in London and run
a Not in My Cuppa Campaign about large scale or "battery" production of milk.

What does the milk buying public think?

As I have travelled around the UK this Summer I have been asking the question "How do you think milk is produced?" maybe I need to refine this question because the usual answer is "What do you mean?".
I was always taught not to answer a question with a question, but this response maybe tells a story in itself

Does it tell me that no-one really has an opinion?
Once I have been asked the question "What do you mean?" I have to then start to ask a few more leading questions like
"Well, what do you think cows eat?" Most popular answer by far GRASS
"Where do cows live?" Most popular answer FIELDS
"What do you think of 8000 cows kept inside?" Most popular answer "that sounds awful"
"But, they are really well looked after, in fact probably the best looked after cows ever..." Answer: it still sounds awful.
Now, this is a very minor survey of a few people I meet along the way at events my children attend and people in the pub.
But, the only other surveys I have come across that are out there are by DairyCo (I have to declare my interest as a board member here) whose consumer survey suggests that 62% the people asked think UK Dairy Farmers do a good job. (Yippee!!)
Another survey by an animal welfare group said 2/3 of shoppers would not buy milk produced on large scale indoor dairy units. (Hmmm not so good)
So, like with all surveys it matters what your question is, it also matters how hard you SHOUT OUT THE RESULTS!!!
I have to say that if I was editor of the Daily Mail I think I would go with "2/3 shoppers shun factory milk" to the much nicer "2/3 of poeple think farmers do a good job" Its gonna sell more papers lets face it.
I think that most people think that dairy farming in general involves fields and grass. The DairyCo survey seems to suggest this as well, it also suggests people would like cows to be well looked after, but are fairly split (or would you say indifferent) to cows being kep inside all year round.
If we want the general public to accept milk from herds housed all year round then there is a huge learning exsercise involved.
The fact that the knowledge that milk is produced in this way is "out there" and the fact that animal welfare activists have the issue well and truly in their sights means that the Dairy industry is well behind the curve.
I am not for or against a large scale dairy like Nocton Dairies which will have 8100 cows kept inside all year I am, like most of the general public it would seem, indifferent to it.
My worry is that whatever sytem you use produce milk in could be affected by any adverse publicity this will generate.
My cows have as much chance to eat grass as I can give them, I like it that way and at the moment it is reasonably profitable.
If demand for milk is hit or adverse press reduced my milk price then my profitability might go out of the window.
Large Scale Dairying is a challenge for the industry- at the moment I think there is room for every system- but like with GM I think that maybe the consumer should have a choice of how the milk they buy is produced. Then they can put their money where their mouth is.........

UK Milk- The current picture (ish)

Most milk is still produced traditionally in the UK based on grazing cows outside in the summer and feeding conserved grass or forage in the winter when the cows come inside sheds to shelter from the elements.
This is a bit of a general statement; but so is the next one.

Consumers (sometimes known rather sexistly (is that a word)) as the Housewife, expect food to be cheap.


The percentage of income spent on food has shrunk from 33% to 15% in the last 50 years.

Farmers are paid less now per litre of milk than they were 20 years ago.

Petrol price in that time has risen from 40ppl to 111ppl.

Do the math!!

This has had a serious impact on the profit per litre of dairy farmers and now around 80 dairy farmers per day leave the industry (Source: DairyCo Datum)

If your business made only a few pence for every unit of product you produced in your business how would you make more money?

There are 3 basic ways of doing this

1) Charge more for each unit

2) make each unit more cheaply

3) produce more units


Dairy Farmers are no different to any other business in basic economics and because dairy farmers don't have a lot of control over the price they charge for milk so options 2 and 3 are their only way to make more money.

So, it is no surprise that the way milk is produced is changing and it seems to be polarising into the following two systems- this once again is a generalisation so don't start on me!!

1) Low input extensive grazed systems where capital and input costs are kept to a minimum so that lower yields can be profitable at a higher unit profit

2) Large intensive systems where large number of cows are kept indoors and their diet, environment and health and welfare are strictly controlled to produce large volumes of product with lower unit profit.


I said that dairy farmers were no different to other businesses, well they are except for the fact that they do not have machines (yeah i know they have tractors but bear with me) they have animals and this, if we don't watch out, is where we may come unstuck as the consumer has a bit of an love of animals as well as a love of cheap food.


My study over the next 12 months is to try and find out if consumers are actually worried about where their food comes from and if they find they don't like how we produce their milk, are they happy to pay more for it to be produced in a different way.

This is what I do....

I have a dairy farm, on the farm we have 220 cows some of which are friesan, some are jersey and some are crosses of both breeds. We have these cows because they are good a producing milk from grass, and our farm is good at growing grass.
I have farmed here with my wife Liz for the past 15 years, our daughter Harriet was born just before we moved here and Rachael followed 21 months later.
We moved here from our old family farm which was smaller, I lived there with my parents and brother for most of my life before I got married.The farm was 112 acres with 90 cows when we left.
I really love living here at Hilltop Farm, and even when we were not making much money we have never wanted to leave. We have tried new ways of making the farm yield more money, for example we made yoghurt on the farm with our milk and sold cheese for a while, but at the moment we are concentrating on producing milk and making compost from garden waste delivered to us by the local council. this is used b other farmers locally to grow their crops.
Over the past 4 years we have been converting the farm to be organic. I agree with organic principles about animal welfare and using home produced feeds for our cows.However, I have not been able to find someone to buy our milk as organic so we currently supply The Fresh Milk Company who make Seriously Strong cheese in Stranraer. Our milk is very good for cheese making as it is high in fat and protein.
I am concerned that I don't know the customers who ultimately buy my milk and what they want from it so I have applied for a scholarship to travel the world to find out "consumer attitudes to how milk is produced" this blog will be the story of that study tour. I have travelled around the UK over the summer to speak to consumer groups, milk processors, supermarkets and farmers to get an idea of what is going on in the United Kingdom. In 6 weeks, I am off to China for international research. China is the biggest growth market for dairy in the world. Later, I am going to Australia and New Zealand where milk is sold as Free Range.
Next spring I am going to Africa, a lot of our vegetables are grown in Africa- might this be where milk comes from soon?
Finally, next summer i am off to see for myself the mega-farms in the USA as well as their resurging market for Raw unpasteurised milk.