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.