Milk. One of life's necessities. It comes in many forms and has many uses. It used to
be delivered to our doors daily. Now you're finding it at the back of the supermarket for
about 50 pence per litre.
Milking cows is big business. In fact it's a business that's been around for nine millennium.
Most of us all consume a dairy product every day. It wasn't so long ago that milk was delivered
locally by horse and cart. These days large commercial processors and supermarkets are
in charge of the industry. But the price they pay for the milk they sell to us leaves many
farmers struggling to survive.
We're making a Newport cheese today which is a hard pressed cheese.
This is Martin Moydan. Five years ago his farm wasn't making any money but he rescued
his business making and selling his own award winning cheese. It's a small scale operation
but no longer is he struggling to stay afloat.
It was a necessity really from coming back to the family farm and wanting to be involved
in it. It's sort of putting my own stamp on the business and looking at ways to safeguard
the future of the family farm. We're restricted on our acreage. We've got a small acreage.
It's a small family farm so a way of developing that would be to do something with the milk
itself. And that's what led me into the cheese making really.
Nowadays there are large numbers of farmers like Martin diversifying to stay afloat. Ten
years ago Phil Newcomb turned to organic farming. He now bottles and sells his own organic
milk and cream.
I think it was just a sequence of events that was making me think why do we do these things
and stop looking at the mainstream way of farming but possibly looking at different
alternatives.
The whole thing about farming is that you look at the whole of the industry, the whole
of your farm and take every single detail. And yeah it's fantastic now to be organic
farming and not using chemicals and fertilisers. We get equally as good a grasp now by using
red clovers and clovers.
Does it make you sort of a bit more proud to see that your products are going directly
to a customer and not just sort of being amalgamated within the whole milk industry?
Yeah it certainly does. I mean I can't get over it. When I go to a shop and I'm delivering
some milk and I go in there and somebody goes along and there's a massive range of milks
on the shelf and they'll pick up my milk. It gets me a buzz that I can't even now because
we're lumping the throat sometimes. I think that that person has chosen my milk against
all those others. It really does give me a lump in the throat.
You're now making a profit. You're employing a lot of other people. That just wasn't possible
beforehand when you were following sort of a supermarket strategy was it?
No not at all. About four years ago we really reached a point where we felt we'd lost enough
money. Not wanted to be a milk and farmer but we had lost enough money in the milking
cows and it was time really to pack up milking cows. Let's face it there are about 15 dairy
farmers going out every week for exactly the same reason. But I always fancied selling
direct and having a go. So at that point we asked around I could sell about 100 litres
a week, 150 litres a week. I knew that. So we thought like let's give it a go and convert
the burden as cheap as we possibly could. And in the first week we did 300 litres and
we're now doing the region of about 10,000 litres a week now. So yeah it's grown from
strength to strength.
Guys like Martin and Phil have been very successful in turning away from major supermarkets. For
those with no choice farming is a day to day struggle.
The challenge of making money from every litre is huge. It's a huge capital investment in
farming. We're about a national average sized dairy herd with 100 cows producing around
7,000 litres a year. Each of those cows is probably going to cost us 1,500 pounds to
purchase in the first place or to rear and bring into the herd. So we've got a lot of
money invested in the business. The bigger challenge though is getting sufficient money
out of the food chain, out of the supermarkets and the dairies to cover our costs of production.
The end of the day, everybody's here to make money. You are kind of pushed into a situation
where you have to sell your milk to someone unless you've got the money to set up your
own processing plant and bottle and pasteurize your own milk. You kind of have to do what
they want from you. They've kind of got you by the scruff of the neck.
And they all want some milk, don't you mate?
Mark Spencer used to be a dairy farmer but found his herd of cows just weren't profitable.
Several years ago he took the difficult decision to sell off his herd.
My grandfather came here in 1939. Milk cows were three generations. Unfortunately, I was
a generation that couldn't make it pay when it came to 2000. Fundamentally, you could
only sustain losses for so long and we were milking cows. We were probably losing money
for five consecutive years. There came a point where we'd already diversified into the farm
shop. The farm shop was expanding and was profitable. The dairy herd was static and was losing
money. We had to make a decision which way we were going to take the business.
Farmers are pretty entrepreneurial and they'll always find a solution to a problem. The question
is going to be where are we going to get the milk from when all of those farmers have diversified
into something else. We're then in a position where we're going to have to import milk products
and raw milk.
So ultimately farmers are moving away from the art of farming. What does this mean for
the British economy?
Well, this is actually very serious because at this moment in time there are two economies
on the other side of the earth in the Chinese and Indian economy that are actually expanding
at an enormous rate. We're going to find ourselves in a position where we're going
to have hungry, wealthy people as they move to a Western diet. They're going to be able
to purchase food out of the European Union. We're going to find ourselves in the EU in
a situation where we've got food shortages for the first time since the 1940s and that's
going to have a big impact on the British consumer.
Mark now has a very successful farm shop and is running to become the next MP of Mapley
and Sherwood. What politically should be being done to sort of ensure farmers a better deal?
Well, I think what we need is a supermarket ombudsman that's going to actually control
the way that supermarkets dominate the market and the way that they almost bully farmers
into the prices that are paid.
There are very few incentives to stay in dairy farming these days and almost no new entries
into the business. It seems the only reason why most farmers don't sell up is their love
of the job.
It's the joy of actually doing it and you can actually see what you've produced at the
end of the day and you can go out to meet the consumer and they can try it and they'll
come back and purchase more from you.
What gets you up every day?
Look, it's me up every morning. I think the dawn chorus mostly. I love it. I mean, getting
up in the early morning. I'm an early morning person anyway, you know, and getting up in
the early mornings and then walking out around fetching the cows and you see fuckers walking
across the field or badgers and my life and things like that. I love it.
Milk is a valuable commodity but supermarkets will offer the lowest price possible to get
customers through the door. That being said, they only have to offer a couple of patents
more to guarantee farmers a viable future. At the moment, farmers are leaving the business
at an amazing rate and some estimates say we might have to import all of our liquid
milk by 2020. A lot of us buy fair trade chocolate and bananas. Perhaps now we should be thinking
of fair trade milk.
So sorry about that.
You know, I guess you're just saying.
