Regional Farmer Meetings

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…

Community Spirit

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…

Time for change

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…

A race to the bottom

  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…

Promar herd margins

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…

SOS – Save Our Soils

“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…

Liz Earle Wellbeing

  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…

The flavour of the countryside

‘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…