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.