I know everyone is busy getting ready for Christmas now but I just want to update you with details of meetings we are holding for farmers in the New Year. We have lots to talk about – progress with establishing producer standards, our feasibility study and some very interesting consumer research carried out as part…
Coca Cola, the soft drinks giant, has launched its own brand of milk – Fairlife. But, as you might expect, this is no ordinary milk. Coca Cola say that Fairlife will contain 50% more protein, 50% more calcium, 30% less sugar and no Lactose. In 1969 a television advert for Coke assembled young people from…
Thank you to all who came along to the Free Range Dairy farmer meetings in Penrith, Garstang and Nantwich last week. It is really encouraging to see the interest in what we are trying to do and the feedback on our standards and strategy for getting free range milk to the market is invaluable. I…
We have now launched formal membership of the Free Range Dairy Network for farmers and we are also giving others who want to be able to choose milk from cows in fields the chance to support us. In order to bring about real change in the British Dairy industry we need to bring farmers and…
We have been fortunate enough to secure a small amount of funding to run a series of regional meetings for farmers interested in winning recognition for free range milk production, over the next few months. Perhaps now more than ever before, there is an urgent need to find a way to install value in the…
When I was getting a few jobs done on the farm early yesterday morning, before heading off for our Free Range Dairy meeting, I was heartened to hear BBC Radio 4 discussing opportunities to engage consumers and secure a fair price for milk, which reinforced my belief that we are on the right track. You…
How much more can we achieve by working together? Free Range Dairy Network has been set up as a Community Interest Company (CIC) to create just that – a community. Farmers often find themselves isolated and unheard, living and working as they do in remote rural areas with no one to speak for them. In…
A week ago I attended a local meeting arranged by Farmers for Action (FFA) at which David Handley highlighted the need for the British dairy industry to stop promoting increased milk output without first securing markets for that extra milk. An estimated 200 dairy farmers, concerned about the recent downward spiral in milk prices, were…
When I set Free Range Dairy in 2011, it was largely born out of my frustration at the lack of value in British milk and the constant struggle for farmers to achieve a fair reward for what they produced. What started as movement to allow farmers who graze their cows to distinguish themselves from intensive…
Over the past few months dairy farmers have been forced to accept a series of milk price cuts totalling almost 5 pence a litre. For a typical family farm with 150 cows, producing 1 million litres of milk, that amounts to a reduction in revenue of £45,000 a year. In many instances, all of…
Why are Britain’s supermarkets in a race to bottom right now and what will they find when they get there? I heard on the Today Programme this morning that Sainsbury’s are setting up a joint venture with Danish retailer Netto, in an attempt to take on the rapidly growing ‘discounters’. Meanwhile, Morrisons have just…
Thanks to Dr George Fisher for a really interesting article in the excellent June issue of British Dairying magazine. Dr Fisher explains “We don’t tend to think of grazed grass in the same way as other feeds like silage or concentrate, where we measure the energy content to judge its quality. But, we should do,…
Figures produced by James Dunn from Promar Consultancy show that headline rises in dairy herd margins are largely down to increasing milk prices over the last 12 months. In an article in Dairy Farmer magazine, Mr Dunn showed that whilst average milk yield per cow rose from 7,698 litres to 8,006 (+ 308 litres) on…
There is now a link on our home page to the Pasture Promise TV website. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will find it under the ‘Follow Us’ section alongside the Facebook, Twitter and You Tube icons. Graham Harvey is doing some great work to promote sustainable milk and meat…
“The farming lobby has wrecked efforts to defend our soil”. That was the title of a blog posted on The Guardian website by George Monbiot, last Thursday. The blog was referring to the National Farmers Union’s successful efforts to prevent the passing of an EU directive that was to set out a framework to protect…
Interest in how the way in which dairy farmers manage their herds influences the quality of our milk continues to grow. Through her new website Liz Earle is doing a lot of work to promote healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle and Liz recognises the contribution that milk and meat from grazing herds can…
We still have some way to go to make milk from free range dairy herds a widely available choice across the UK. But, I am really pleased with the growing interest in Free Range Dairy, particularly since winning the BBC Outstanding Farmer of The Year Award and the publicity that has generated. In our busy…
I heard an interesting debate about the breeding of dairy cows on Radio 4’s Farming Today programme this morning, which examined how breeding for higher milk yields has impacted on the health and wellbeing of modern dairy cows. You can listen to the radio programme here. Advances in cattle breeding have given farmers the…
‘The White Stuff’. That’s what one promotional campaign once called it. In recent years farmers supplying large volumes of milk for the liquid milk market have been said to be on ‘White Water Contracts’ – so called because of the low fat requirements. Is that how you regard your milk? As white water or the…