2023-08-21 13:15:27
According to a survey, fewer dairy cows will graze on meadows by 2025.
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Apparently, almost every tenth dairy farmer is toying with the idea of stopping milk production by 2025. This emerges from the published results of a survey by the English Farmers’ Union (NFU) among 600 farmers.
Inadequate yields, volatile markets and the scale of investment required are making farmers reconsider staying in the dairy sector. According to the NFU, more than half of the producers stated that the reason for the likely cessation of milk production was that they were unable to keep up with the level of investment required to enable the farms to comply with the legal regulations. This applies above all to investments in manure storage.
84% of those surveyed were also worried about the higher prices for animal feed, 83% about energy costs and 74% about expenditure on fertilisers. However, more than a third of farmers who wanted to stop production did so because they were retiring, according to the association.
A fifth of all farmers surveyed wanted to hand over their farm to the next generation. In addition to those who wanted to stop milk production altogether, 23% of respondents said they were unsure about continuing production beyond the next two years, the NFU further reported.
According to him, farmers with smaller herds of cows who produce less than 1 million kg of raw milk per year have stated that they also want to stop milk production before March 2025 than is the case with colleagues with a larger herd of cows.
The UK Agriculture and Horticulture Promotion Organization (AHDB) estimates that there are currently around 7,500 milk producers in the UK; that is 4.8% less than a year earlier. Around 14.9 million kg of raw milk were produced in the 2021/22 milk year.
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