It’s that time of year when we can feel the world around us changing, as suddenly summer seems to have slipped away. Shortening daylight, colder mornings, mist and dew, accompanied by a rich hue of orange and gold colours splashed across the once green landscape, announce the arrival of autumn. Still today, in mid October,…
The recently released State of Nature Report with contributions from more than 50 conservation groups, claims ‘policy-driven’ intensification of farming is a significant driver of nature loss in the UK. The report assessed 8,000 species and found that one in ten are threatened with extinction. In a report by BBC Environmental Correspondent, Claire Marshall, lead author of…
This week we ran our last Free Range Dairy event of the summer at Bar house farm in Gloucestershire. Jenni and Jerry along with their cows have been the stars of the events. Jenni making free range cakes and everything in between for lunches that people couldn’t resist after a walk around the farm, pictures…
TV chef and good food ambassador, Jamie Oliver, has established an ambitious new initiative to bring about a global revolution in food and we have been invited to join in and tell the world about the work of the Free Range Dairy Network CIC and its aims. You can read the full details on Jamie’s…
July 1st 2016 marks the second birthday of the Free Range Dairy Network. Our ‘birth certificate’ below from Companies House shows the date we created our Community Interest Company (CIC) and embarked on our stated social mission “to promote the value of pasture-based milk production on British dairy farms for the benefit of cows, consumers…
It is unsurprising, in the wake of the work we have done to raise awareness that not all milk is the same, others are now looking to establish labels providing an assurance that dairy cows are grazed in fields. Waitrose launched a new TV advert in April, shortly after I appeared on BBC Countryfile talking…
One year on for Stephenson’s Dairy and Free Range Dairy … I was at Cup North, part of Spin Manchester, this weekend helping Chris of Stephenson’s Dairy with his milk stand. Chris was also providing all the Free Range milk for the coffee roasters J Atkinson & Co. Ltd, Casa Expresso and Ancoats Coffee Co,…
As the big question looms over whether we stay or leave the EU, we’re hearing about immigration, the NHS and cost to UK households but just as important but not getting the column inches in the media is food and farming. Understandably people are concerned about housing, education, jobs and health but for real unrest…
In the UK we’ve got used to having what seems like a limitless choice when it comes to our food purchases. In the supermarkets chiller section, we see row upon row of milk that’s standard, organic, semi, skimmed and whole fat. We buy 80% of our milk in one of the main major supermarkets and…
By Prof John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri, Columbia College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and well respected and published author on ‘factory farming’ in the USA. Please support the crowd fund project to keep cows in fields and our traditional dairy farmers in business. When I read Jenni Hobbs’…
World Animal Protection are asking people to sign their Full Fact Milk pledge and join them in calling for clear milk labelling and ask supermarkets and shops to put Free Range Milk on shelves. If you click here you can find out more about their campaign and watch their video, which features some of our Free…
There have been stories in both The Sunday Times and The Telegraph recently, about the anticipated exodus of up to 2,000 farmers from the UK dairy industry in the coming year, as the milk crisis continues unabated. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a crisis as “a decisive moment” or “a time of danger or great…
I went to a really interesting seminar this week organised by Food Thinkers Collaboration about Ecofeminism with Professor Mary Mellor of Northumbria University and renowned food investigative journalist Shelia Dillon. Ecofeminism is a word if I’m honest I’ve never come across before but I found a lot of what was discussed made sense in relation…
I have just returned from a conference organised by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), at which I was asked to present my ideas for driving change towards more sustainable livestock farming. The EEB is the environmental voice of European citizens and Europe’s largest federation of green NGO’s. Its recent conference was all about the European…
A new report released by ‘The Food Foundation’ this month called ‘FORCE-FED: Does the food system constrict healthy choices for typical British families?’ takes a closer look at what a typical British family eats and what influences their food choices. The report looked at national data sets, primary data collection, secondary sources alongside interviews to…
Last week I attended the first Global Farm Platform Conference ‘Steps to Sustainable Livestock’, held in Bristol. The event was promoted as a ‘go to’ event for academics, researchers, NGO’s, policymakers and livestock producers working toward sustainability of ruminant systems. Presentations by researchers from all over the world covered themes including Consumption of Human Food…
Most people understand that it is the process of giving birth that stimulates milk production, or lactation, in mammals. In dairy farming the regular birth of calves is essential for keeping cows in a productive state, since the milk naturally begins to dry up around 10 to 12 months after giving birth. This is…
“We need to update our worldview: we are no longer a small world on a big planet. We are now a big world on a small planet.” I thought that sentence by Johan Rockström a professor in environmental science at Stockholm University and executive director of Stockholm Resilience Centre really captures the problems we are…
I was so pleased to read about Deputy NFU President, Minette Batters, promoting beef from suckler herds at the South West Beef event this week. It is music to my ears to hear someone else talking about defining the value in a traditional British farming system. Especially when that someone is a representative of…
The clocks went back last weekend and British summertime has officially come to an end. The arrival of autumn in all of its resplendent colours marks another change in the seasons and nowhere is this more evident than on our farms and in our countryside. Yet industrial food and farming increasingly finds new ways to…