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 that doesn’t mean the rest of the dairy farming industry hasn’t moved on and you can now find herds in excess of 1000 dairy cows of different systems all over the UK.

In dairy farming there have been a few statistics that have been fairly constant over the past 50 years or so:

• Average Herd size in general has grown
• Average yield in general has grown
• Returns per litre in general have shrunk

This is a global trend against a background of subsidy and improvements in technology and breeding but in general the falling economic returns to farmers drives the first two points. Why is this?

Government policy in Europe since World War 2 has been aimed at securing food supplies at affordable prices. But, while our farmers were growing their businesses so were the retailers, but at a much faster pace. The rise of the supermarkets’ and consumers’ desire for ever cheaper food has driven down prices at the till and at the farm gate, to the extent that consumers now expect food to be cheap. So here is the first and most blatant example of consumers influencing the way we farm.

This change has been going on in the post war years too and more recently we can see that there have been more subtle changes in the expectations of consumers which clashes with the longer term effects of the cheaper food example I have already discussed.

Deregulation of the milk market in the UK in the early Nineties heralded an era of farm assurance to dairy farms. There was a plethora of schemes as milk buyers created a way to add traceability for the customers. Luckily for farmers and consumers, the schemes were amalgamated into a national scheme which now forms part of the wider Red Tractor Farm Assurance Schemes. This was initially a simple scheme with simple aims so that everyone could be sure that dairy farmers were farming well and regulatory needs were met.

Large Supermarkets with wide and very varied food availability (even out of season), the rise of the celebrity chef and food channels on TV and a general rise in affluence contributed to change in the nation’s eating habits over the past 20 – 30 years. As tastes have changed so has a desire for knowledge of where food comes from and this means a tacit inquisitiveness for how food is farmed.

As you might expect consumers knowledge about their food comes from the places where they learn about their food in the first place. So, it is no suprise that their view of food production is based on perceptions from advertising and food programmes.

So, when asked in surveys if they care about how animals are farmed they think of cows eating grass, of small farmers who care for their animals in romantic settings; this became their view of traditional farming. There is increasing evidence that the romantic image that consumers have of livestock farming, which feeds into our ever stricter farm assurance to include some welfare outcomes and even stricter measures on some supermarket direct contracts, is at odds with their desire for ever cheaper food.

The biggest proportion of livestock farms in the UK and across Europe could be classed as ‘Modern Traditional’ but look across the world and farms are still growing in line with the graph at the start of this article. We are at a crossroads where farms will grow beyond what could be classed as traditional and will move into Modern Corporate and business-like Farming. This is a trend I have seen in every major livestock farming area across the world. I believe this is leading to a clash in our industry which can only be managed by education about how livestock farming is changing to meet the needs of our growing population without compromising animal welfare or the farmed environment.

In Europe at the moment Animal Welfare Groups are lobbying for strict animal welfare rules which are based on emotion rather than scientific fact. This could result in rules which will adversely affect the efficient larger farms based in the UK and result in growth of cheaper imports. Similarly, legislation on ammonia could bring in strict stocking levels on farms. Farmers need to work with their levy organisations and their governments to create useful databases for welfare outcomes to inform a debate which is in danger of being overtaken by misinformation.

Livestock Farming is delivering larger, animal welfare friendly meat and milk production in the UK. We are better and more efficient than our near neighbours in Europe, our animal welfare is comparable but on a larger scale than Europe and we are a world leader on greenhouse gas mitigation through projects like the Dairy Roadmap.

The opportunity for our dairy and beef industry to grow and increase exports based on Modern Large Scale but consumer-friendly production is here. Let’s educate our consumers and influence their behaviour and grow our industry.