I have farmed in a family business all my life. When I left school 30 years ago my dad had 40 dairy cows. I have always fed grass to cows and visited New Zealand 25 years ago so you can imagine my system. 15 years ago I entered into a joint venture with 300 cows, one of the largest herds around our area. So in about 15 years I had grown the herd 7.5 times. I haven’t really expanded much more, but...

Introduction The agricultural industry is finding it increasingly difficult to ensure consistent production of high quality food at a national and global level as a result of a number of challenges. Volatile markets struggle to satisfy growing demand for quality food under economic, regulatory, climate change and environmental pressures. The role of new and existing technologies in the sustainabl...

Introduction Interest in dairy cow milk fatty acid (FA) profile has increased in recent years due primarily to a growing consumer interest in the nutritional quality of dairy products. Also, recent developments in the ability of milk mid-infrared spectrometry to accurately predict some milk fatty acids facilitated the routine collection of individual cow milk FA profile from routine milk recordin...

Introduction The promise of an early and accurate prediction of genetic merit for an individual has been the subject of many years of research and development and became possible with the introduction of low cost and high density genotyping tools in 2008. Since then the rapid uptake of the technology has already transformed the global dairy breeding industry and was incorporated into the UK dairy...

Introduction Public health nutrition is facing many major challenges and three of these will shape food-related policy for decades to come. These are the rapidly increasing burden of obesity, the increasing age of populations and the challenge of increasing world food production by some 50% by 2030 to meet the increasing demands (House of Commons, 2009) whilst minimising the effect on the environ...

I’ve been a dairy farmer now for approaching 30 years and I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last 20 years in the regular company of grazers. It’s been a great place to be, always optimistic, positive and arguably one of the most progressive sectors of agriculture. Very rarely in a grazing discussion group would you ever hear poor milk price, the weather or the cost of concentrates blamed for low...

This paper sets out the key aspects and implications of the revised Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) legislation and the relevance to the beef and dairy industries. The focus is on possible changes in support payments received by farms but other aspects, including the removal of milk quotas, are also discussed. The importance of CAP to beef and dairy production Defra’s provisional estimates for ...

I must admit that over the years I have done more than my fair share of experimenting. Not the Rock and Roll lifestyle as such, you understand, but the less glamorous task of finding the perfect cow for my suckler herd. Thirty years ago the Hereford Friesian from my father’s dairy herd set me up on my own, and I crossed them with some very expensive Charolais bulls bought at Perth. But as my broth...

Background British beef producers currently enjoy the highest cattle prices on the planet. The beef sector also enjoys a high level of support in form of subsidies (SFP, LFASS or in Scotland Beef Calf scheme payments). Beef consumption survives a succession of challenges and red meat shows resilience as a highly popular food. Why then are suckler cow numbers continuing to decline? If these benig...

The NFE unit in Yorkshire The Net Feed Efficiency (NFE) unit was established by the Beef Improvement Group to identify the most feed efficient future generations of Stabiliser sires. Both young breeding bulls and finishing steers have been evaluated through the unit over the last two years and the NFE unit is focussed on improving the efficiency of nutrient use for maintenance as well as growth a...

Introduction Beef carcases in the abattoir are currently valued based on carcase weight, EUROP conformation grid and 1–5 fat class. In order to breed cattle with improved carcase attributes, the pedigree sector select animals based upon Estimated Breeding Values (EBV) for 400 day live weight (a proxy for carcase weight), ultrasound scanned muscle depth (a proxy for conformation) and ultrasound fa...

Introduction Within the sheep industry it is recognised that sale rams are frequently overfed for breeding purposes and this is detrimental to their health, fertility and longevity. In 2012, EBLEX produced a booklet that aimed to share information on the production of rams that were ‘fit for purpose’ and after consultation with the beef industry it was decided to replicate the publication for bee...

At the time of my Nuffield scholarship award in January 2012, beef was in short supply globally with herd size also declining in the majority of beef producing nations. Population growth projections together with increasing demand for beef meat in regions of the world (where increasing affluence was creating greater demand for an aspirational food like beef), were also increasing pressure on the s...

Market Polarisation and the quest for differentiation Despite evidence of recovery in the wider economy, there is little sign of macroeconomic growth trickling down to the grocery shopping trip. It remains the case that household budgets still feel the influence of austerity. There are three ‘squeezes’ on the household budget. Firstly, world food prices are being driven upwards driven by cereals ...