Sir,
I read your recent article, ‘60 dairy farms face exit as milk price gap nears 15ppl’, with a mixture of relief and sadness.
Relief, because somebody is finally talking publicly about what the 60 farms supplying Müller’s Skelmersdale site are experiencing.
Sadness, because behind a headline about pence per litre is a situation that is becoming increasingly difficult for farming families to live with.
I am one of those farmers.
Every month, we produce milk knowing that the price we receive for it is significantly below the estimated cost of producing it. Meanwhile, we watch milk prices elsewhere in the industry rise to levels that seem increasingly distant from our own.
It is difficult to describe quite what that does to a farming business.
You start questioning every bill that arrives. Repairs that really ought to be done are considered again. Investment gets postponed. You scrutinise feed, fertiliser, electricity, machinery and every other cost, looking for savings while knowing there is a limit to what can be cut without compromising the farm you are trying to run.
And then the milk statement arrives.
You can work longer hours. You can try to become more efficient. You can make countless small savings. But none of those things can bridge a gap approaching 15 pence on every litre of milk you produce.
At one million litres, that difference is £150,000.
That isn’t a small reduction in profit. For many businesses, it is the difference between being able to invest and merely surviving; between making plans for the future and wondering how long the present situation can continue.
Perhaps one of the hardest things is knowing that farmers elsewhere can receive substantially more for essentially the same product.
We all milk cows. We all get up when an animal needs us. We all face the same pressures of animal welfare, staffing, regulation, weather and rising input costs. The cows still need feeding and caring for 365 days a year, regardless of what appears on the milk statement at the end of the month.
Dairy farmers understand volatility. We know there will be good years and bad years. Nobody enters agriculture expecting an easy living or guaranteed profit.
But there is a fundamental difference between accepting the normal ups and downs of farming and being expected to continually produce something for considerably less than it costs to produce.
That simply cannot continue indefinitely.
What worries me most isn’t only what happens to our businesses today. It is what happens next.
How do you encourage the next generation into dairy farming when this is the prospect they see?
How does a farmer justify investing hundreds of thousands of pounds in buildings, slurry infrastructure, technology or improved animal welfare when there is so little confidence in the return?
And what happens when another dairy farmer finally decides they have had enough?
Because when a dairy farm disappears, it isn’t simply a number removed from a spreadsheet.
A herd may be dispersed. Skilled people leave the industry. Local vets, feed merchants, contractors, machinery dealers and countless other rural businesses lose custom. Infrastructure built up over decades can disappear remarkably quickly.
And once it has gone, it is incredibly difficult to put back.
That is why the decline in Scotland’s dairy herds should concern far more people than just dairy farmers.
There is also something deeply frustrating about being described so often as ‘resilient’.
Farmers are resilient. We have to be.
But resilience should mean getting through a difficult calving, a wet harvest, a disease outbreak or a bad year. It should not mean accepting indefinitely that the product we work every day of the year to produce is worth less than it costs us to make it.
The 60 Skelmersdale suppliers highlighted in your article are not asking for sympathy.
We are asking for a fair opportunity to run viable businesses.
We want to farm. We want to look after our cows well. We want to employ people, support other rural businesses, invest in our farms and continue producing milk for consumers.
Most importantly, we want to be able to look ahead and believe there is a future in doing it.
Because there comes a point when you cannot save another penny, work another hour or become sufficiently ‘efficient’ to compensate for the size of the gap.
For some of these 60 farms, the question is no longer simply, ‘How do we make this work?’
It is becoming:
‘How long can we afford to keep doing it?’
I hope those with the power to influence what happens next understand the significance of that question before more farmers are forced to answer it by leaving dairy farming altogether.
A concerned Skelmersdale dairy farmer
Name and address supplied
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