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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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‘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…
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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…
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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…
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I am delighted to have won the 2014 BBC Food & Farming Award for Outstanding Farmer of the Year. Listen here to the award ceremony. I was presented with the award by Adam Henson and Mike Gooding at a celebration of food and farming held in Bristol on Thursday evening. I was privileged to find myself in the…
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I was really pleased to get the opportunity to outline what I’m trying to achieve with Free Range Dairy, on BBC Countryfile last night and even more pleased at the really positive response I’ve had from farmers and consumers since. If you didn’t get to see the programme last night, you can watch it here!…
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As you may already have heard, I am very fortunate to have been selected as one of the three finalists in this year’s BBC Food & Farming Awards. Along with Luke Hasell who runs The Story Group specialising in delivering organic food direct to the public and Steven Jack, an innovative carrot and potato grower…
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Needless to say. I’m absolutely delighted to be in the final three for BBC Food and Farming Awards! Thanks to all who have been in touch. The awards take place in Bristol on May 1st 2014. Read more on the BBC website.
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Alan Tovey reports in the Telegraph that Tesco is cutting the cost of four pints of milk from £1.39 to £1.00 today. Tesco joins others like Asda, Lidl and Aldi who have sold milk at this sort of price for some time now, as part of a campaign to “focus on everyday low prices on…
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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,…
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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…
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