Dairy Farming in Wiltshire
If you live in Wiltshire for 30 years you will get to know a farmer. One who has become a great friend tells me regularly about the issues he faces not with farming itself, but the regulations and subsidy framework that surrounds it. The mechanics of the primary task of making money by selling what you produce made tortuous by this external influence, with change often badly managed and implemented by DEFRA.
Impact of Brexit and External Factors
Brexit of course bought farming into sharper focus as a settled subsidy and supply landscape was suddenly subjected to huge variables. Where would our food come from? Where would we export our food to? How would we move away from the EU Common Agricultural Policy? What regulations would now govern farming and food safety? We all also suffered the shocks of the Ukraine war and related inflation that have raised fertiliser and fuel costs dramatically.
Experience at Berkley Farm Dairy
Spending time on a farm provided firsthand insights into current farming practices. I’m grateful for the time of Nick, Chris and Ed Gosling who spent so much patient time with me at Berkley Farm Dairy in Wroughton explaining the mechanics of milk and dairy production.
With the dairy farm right next to their own dairy processing unit, traceability is easy – and food miles are minimal. The farm delivers about 2,000 litres a day up the track, from its herd of 240 Guernsey cows in a refrigerated trailer towed by a Land Rover. It is then processed same or next day (if delivered on a Sunday) into pasteurised Gold Top milk and butter. Immediately to doorstep in glass bottles by a far-reaching electric van delivery service (no floats, these are Mercedes Vitos!).
Farming Practices and Challenges
But I’ve jumped straight to the milk. Back at the farm, Nick farms the herd as his family has done for 3 generations. On the morning I met him, he had just had a follow up TB test. You need to have 2 clear tests to have all restrictions removed. TB remains an issue, but badger culling locally has worked. Any cow that reacts with the test would be immediately sent to slaughter. This is very distressing especially when the farmer has bred, reared, and cared for the animal as carefully as Nick.
Cows of different ages were segregated into sheds – the ground still too wet back then for any periods outside, so feeding was inside. Nick has installed an automated German made elevated monorail robotic feeder, salvaged almost unused from another farm and adapted to fit. When the cows are inside the sheds, the whole feeding process is almost totally automated reducing waste and ensuring consistency of feed mix. Nick is rightly proud of this. Feed to yield is critical for profitability. The farm is organic, so uses no nitrate on the soil, but creates huge silage sausages that are gradually uncovered for winter feed. The cows have no preventative antibiotic treatment, and Chris (Nick’s wife) adopts a homeopathic approach to welfare looking at coat colour, yield and other variables. Each animal sits as a data point on a wheel, tracking yield performance and health.
Most of the moving vehicles on the farm belong to a neighbour who provides them as a service on a contracting basis. Nick noted “Years ago, farmers would keep to themselves and resent another farmer on your farm. Nowadays we specialize and share, it’s much better and more efficient – and friendlier”. Capital costs of machinery means that they need to be working somewhere to pay their way, not idly sitting in a shed.
Milk Production vs Environmental Stewardship
The milking parlour is fitted with Automatic Cluster Removal apparatus. This detects when the milk flow rate falls to a pre-set “take-off” level and disconnects the apparatus preventing over milking. Each cow receives a top up feed in its stall to boost milk production further. I didn’t get to see this happening on the day- but was offered a chance to come back. The whole farm is very impressive and a real testament to the animal and environmental husbandry delivered by Nick and Chris
We took a long walk to the Eastern boundary of the Farm to get a glimpse of the bluebells. Nick walks this at least twice a day and I can see why. Even the M4 looks great when you are looking at it from this vantage point. We talked about rural crime (cyclical, none currently), fly-tipping (a huge and expensive and annoying issue) and then got onto subsidies and the regulatory framework. Nick was clear , subsidies are a way of ensuring that food is affordable. No farmer wants them, but it means that farm gate food prices are lower than they otherwise would be and are more predictable. This means that they are here to stay.
Future of Farming
The move from the EU Common Agricultural Policy has been complex. The interim measure was the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) which tapers off until 2027. The Countryside Stewardship (CS) scheme provides financial capital incentives for farmers to look after and improve the environment over the long term. The new Sustainable Farm Incentive (SFI) launched in 2022 is running alongside CS. Nick grimaced “It’s a lot of forms to fill in, we absolutely have to use 3rd party consultants – everyone does”. It’s too early to tell how the Environmental Land Management schemes in general (ELM), of which CS and SFI form a part will pan out. SFI has led to some famers taking almost all of their land out of food production completely. On the day of my visit, DEFRA announced that they were belatedly capping this amount to a maximum of 25% of land – and announces this on the website “From midnight tonight” – which seems a little last minute and hasty. Food labelling is a real mess and a huge issue for farmers to see Union Flags all over bags of produce grown elsewhere. The red tractor scheme is discredited and “dead”.
To hear Nick talk in a field on his farm in Wroughton, the subsidy scheme seemed like a bit of a complex mess. We surely need to ensure our food security by growing food here, and farm sensitively so that we look after the environment. In the Gulf, Houthi rebels fire on merchant ships sending vessels the long way around. Ukrainian grain is flowing again but is at risk. Import inspections for agrifoods will finally commence this year with yet unknown costs for importers to the UK. We cannot and should not rely on long supply lines for food and yet this is exactly what the government seemed to be doing with the somewhat desperate trade deals with Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Improbably large US chlorinated chickens still lurk in the wings.
Meanwhile, the UK is falling behind the EU on almost every area of environmental regulation, as the bloc strengthens its legislation while the UK weakens it. In some cases, ministers are removing EU-derived environmental protections from the statute book entirely – this too will threaten the Tariff Free trade we have under the EU/UK Trade and Co-Operation agreement.
Conclusion
Where next for farming? Nick is coming up for retirement. Land is finite and under pressure for building and more recently solar energy. Our population is rising, obesity is rising, food waste is rising, food banks are rising. We cannot hope to solve everything, but it strikes me we need to try and avoid more huge changes to the subsidy schemes. That we should simplify, we should ensure food production, we should make export and import to the EU frictionless – and if this means veterinary agreements and common regulations so be it. We need to think, grow and eat local. I’ve just ordered my Gold Top to be delivered on Thursday.
I’ll write more about Ed’s business in next few weeks, but in the meantime huge thanks to Nick Gosling for his time. I’ve also spent time with a Beef Farmer near Marlborough and an organic arable farmer near Rushall – I’ll cover these shortly as well.