The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has reiterated the claim that "Mega-dairies," which keep thousands of cows for milk are financially high-risk, are the wrong direction for the UK dairy industry. image expired

WSPA campaigners have said the 'Not in My Cuppa' campaign, which was launched in response to Nocton Dairies' proposal for an 8,100 cow unit in Lincolnshire, will remain ongoing to combat future mega-dairy proposals, which the organisation said it expects before long, and exercise a popular influence over the development of UK farming.

WSPA’s stance has been supported by Dragon's Den businesswoman Deborah Meaden who said the large-scale farms were based on "unsustainable principles and high-risk economic guesswork." Together they aim to challenge the fallacy that the only option for farmers in times of economic hardship is to "get big or get out."

A report commissioned by the WSPA has revealed that the intensive mega-dairy model is, in fact, less financially stable than smaller, pasture-based systems. Dairy farmers in the UK are struggling to make a profit in a system where increases in price or sales are slow to travel back along the supply chain, but where shocks are felt rapidly and almost exclusively by producers.

Given the invidious position of farmers, facing an inequitable supply system, rising raw materials costs and farmgate prices for milk which remain below the cost of production, it is no surprise that farmers are leaving the industry in droves. The number of dairy farmers in the UK has halved in the last ten years, falling from 30,000 to 15,000.

Report shows mega-dairies susceptible to price fluctuations

However, the WSPA report shows that scaling up is not a sustainable solution to these challenges in the long-term and implies that fundamental changes need to be made to the system in the UK, which, although there have been slight improvements in the past month, remains near the bottom of the EU Milk Price League Table (24th out of the EU 27).

The report found intensive mega-dairies, touted by some as the solution to the problems facing UK farmers, have high costs in terms of feed, labour and other inputs and make only a small margin on each litre of milk, making their money from the large number of cows producing high yields of milk. The approach of scaling up to compete, which has been used without success in the USA, will not support farmers for long.

These mega-dairies can secure higher profits than more traditional dairy farms in good times, but there is a limit to how much yields from cows can increase, and the dairies are vulnerable to price hikes in inputs such as cereals for animal feed or falls in the price of milk, which, with such high operating costs, can quickly push them into the red. They are also likely to compete with traditional dairy farmers for contracts to supply milk, threatening the survival of more members of the industry.

WSPA instead claimed that dairy farmers have a more realistic chance of turning a profit from smaller herds which rely on the cheap feed option of grazed grass, which is not susceptible to price fluctuations like cereals, and with robust breeds of cows that produce less milk but live longer and are healthier.

Neil Darwant, a dairy farm manager who co-wrote the report, said, "Evidence is emerging that the pasture-based systems we have today are both efficient and competitive - farmers do not need to turn to mega-dairies to survive."

Commenting on the WSPA report, Ms Meaden said, "The British dairy is in crisis. Ordinary farmers are being railroaded into thinking that bigger is better and they must go intensive to survive. With this report WSPA and I firmly contest that belief. Not only is it wrong for farmers, the countryside, consumers and for cows, it is based on unsustainable principles and high-risk economic guesswork. WSPA is proposing a viable alternative business model. I hope that it gets the attention it deserves before it’s too late and this crisis becomes an irreversible calamity."

However, DairyCo, the government-funded agency which promotes and assists the industry, refuted the group's claims, saying, "WSPA demonstrates an astonishing naivety about the economics and infrastructure of dairy farming in Britain."