Our dairy farmers receive 4p per litre less for milk than in Europe

The clay is standing up to all this rain remarkably well, but of course we only have a few sheep to worry about now. The high winds have removed most of the leaves, and the colour has now gone, as the landscape is much more winter-like.

The power cut a week last Monday caused a few problems for us. The dairy was back in action within a few minutes as the generator was connected to a tractor and spun round.

At the AD plant, we had a major problem. Our generator had a broken engine, although after 10,000 hours we can’t complain, but with no electricity the tower roofs which are kept up by compressed air, were deflating and we could not burn off the gas.

The big engine had been automatically switched off by the clever switch-gear owned by Scottish Power, but with no power on site we were in a bit of trouble.

Luckily, the power came back on quite quickly, and all was well, and I had traded in our old generator and another one had arrived on site later in the day; at least we are now ready for any future cuts.

n A group of local farmers visited last Thursday, many of them very good dairy farmers; they had come to see the Anaerobic Digester plant working.

Some had been here before, but during the building stage, and had now come to see the engine running. It was an interesting meeting as always, with a healthy amount of scepticism in the air!

The engine was due for its 6000 hour service, and they saw it running, then saw it shut down by the engineers, and the flare lit.

We had a good discussion about the project, the pitfalls, the economics, the wisdom of such a venture and so on. We also discussed our latest move to reduce the number of dairy cows at Crouchlands.

We are reducing cow numbers for three main reasons, the confines of European law (Nitrogen vulnerable zones – where the amount of organic N you can spread on your land is limited to 170kg per Hectare, difficulty in recruiting skilled labour in the South East, and the lack of profitability which hinders capital investment.

In other words, if dairy farming was really profitable, one would rent in more land in order to spread the organic N loading, we would invest in more buildings of modern design and forge ahead.

However, we now have options, and it is far more profitable for us to put our effort and resource into producing electricity than milk. We will reduce the herd by at least half, and concentrate on doing a good job with much less day to day hassle.

This is our decision, others will make theirs, but as I travel up and down the country I see many dairy farmers, with very mixed results on farms.

When you look at the very best, I can’t help thinking that if they were doing such a superb job, technically and economically, in other industries, they would be so much better rewarded for their efforts and their capital.

I can’t see much change in the short term as retailers continue to dominate and processors make it so easy for them by undercutting one another, using farmer’s money to finance their price wars.

n The NFU joins with the WI this week to launch a campaign ‘Mission Milk’, where once again the WI will bring in an independent stance to the debate.

There will be some tough messages for those who are depriving British dairy farmers of a proper price, and as we are running 4p per litre behind other European countries there is no arguing with the fact that the market is not working for us. The supply chain is far too dominated at the top, leaving the primary producer as individuals at the mercy of the big players.

Take the Irish. They have to export 80 per cent of what they produce in the dairy sector (most of it to the UK, whilst we struggle to supply 60 per cent of what our market needs.

Yet so often, as they are now, the Irish dairy farmer enjoys a better price than we do. How can that be?

We have a very good market here with great support from the British public and added cost for other coming in due to that strip of water, yet we see our dairy industry shrinking, whilst the Irish are planning a 50 per cent increase in production over the next decade or so.

What is the future for British dairying? Is it large units housing thousands of cows? Will that produce cheaper milk?

The economics of scale run out quite quickly in dairy, and unless one has a cheap food source, which is increasingly rare, and certainly unlikely at a large scale; with all labour units demanding a full wage (unlike family farms), one has to wonder where the advantages for such units are.

There is no doubt that everything would need to be done to the highest standards, and technology employed to ensure top results, but how do the numbers work?

I think that the family farm is still the most competitive and powerful unit in the country, certainly the most resilient, and as many of them have grown, they do have some scale and can take advantage that.

The cost of producing milk in the west is of course lower due to rainfall and much more grass for grazing and silage making, but the chimney pots are mostly in the South and East, which keeps us busy, and a haulage cost from the west, making us look reasonable despite our dry summers.

We will keep our best cows, and concentrate on doing the best job we can, and Adrian will be able to manage cows once again rather than managing people.

Running a large herd with a team of people is not easy; if those people are not British it makes that task more challenging. With two highly skilled people working shoulder to shoulder, I think that life will be that much easier for all of us, and we can concentrate on getting the best out of the cows.

We can then wait and see how the industry develops.