Retailers have spent a lot of time and money building their reputation for quality and value, to win trust and confidence from their customers. However, there have been one or two hiccups along the way. The horsemeat scandal in 2013 was enormously damaging to the integrity of the supply chain, with everyone wondering where it…
Delivering lasting change in the fortunes of British dairy farmers is quite an undertaking, against the backdrop of increasing market volatility. That’s why we are really grateful for all the support and encouragement we have received from farmers. Free Range Dairy is all about creating an opportunity – instead of sitting back and waiting for…
The papers are full of stories about the dairy crisis and how there is no silver lining in store for UK dairy farmers. The situation is set to continue and possibly get worse as milk quotas end this year and even more cheap milk floods the market. Dairy farmers are now facing a lose/lose situation…
A lot of people are asking how they can help farmers in the midst of the current dairy crisis and want to know where they can source their milk to ensure the producer gets a fair reward. There is understandably some confusion over who is paying farmers a fair price and who is not right…
Last week I took part in a debate about the value of milk compared to bottled water and, in my research, I learned some interesting things about the UK bottled water market and the way in which it is promoted and marketed. There are some interesting comparisons between the volume and value of both the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
If I have got the German translation right, it appears that the Lower Saxony Agricultural Minister, Christian Meyer, is seeking to ban retailers from marketing milk and dairy products with images of cows in fields if they are not committed to sourcing milk from grazing herds. A pasture label will be developed together with the…
At last week’s BBC Food & Farming Awards, food writer and radio presenter Shelia Dillon said something that I think encapsulates what Free Range Dairy is all about. She said “Our finalists represent something special – living proof that good food, tradition and taste are all worth fighting for and sharing knowledge about”. I know…
Last week the latest Free Range Dairy newsletter was circulated to around 13,000 milk producers inside British Dairying magazine. Now, it’s available here on the website for everyone to read. I hope you will see that we have lots to do in 2014 and some exciting opportunities to explore. So, if you haven’t done already,…
My apologies for not having found time to update you on what is happening with Free Range Dairy for so long. I had a pretty busy last quarter in 2013 including the sad loss of my Dad after his long running battle with cancer at the end of October. Sometimes, you just have to put…
Below is a letter from a Lancashire dairy farmer that appeared in the Farmers Guardian last week. My husband and I have run a family farm for 45 years. We have had good times and bad times. But now I think the bad times are becoming more frequent. Dairy companies do not want to buy…
Figures released by DairyCo yesterday revealed that the number of dairy farmers in England & Wales has fallen again, down to 10,488, a loss of 200 producers over the last twelve months. Last week permission was granted for a 1,000 cow dairy to be erected at Leighton, near Welshpool in Powys, despite concerns about the…
Chief Executive of Tesco, Philip Clarke, indicated in an interview in The Observer that food price inflation is inevitable. “Over the long run I think food prices and the proportion of income spent on food may well be going up,” he said. “Because of growing demand it is going to change. It is the basic…