Milk price row: One Yorkshire farmer’s fight to stay in business

Dairy farmer Chris Shipley at Manor Farm, Thornholme, Driffield. Picture: Bruce Rollinson

The mixed arable and dairy farm has a herd of 60 cows for milking. Last year he invested more than £100,000 in an robotic milking system, but is struggling to meet costs on the dairy side of the business.

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Mr Shipley, 39, said: “We made the decision to invest in the future of the dairy side to improve efficiency and animal welfare. We are conservative about what we get back for milk, but the recent drop does see us down.

“It was a long-term investment and we hope that in the long-term the milk situation will improve, but recent events, and the picture over recent years, has shown that you can’t take that for granted.”

Mr Shipley was one of around 2,500 farmers who protested against cuts to the price of milk in London in 2012. He believes the industry now has three options - large-scale dairy farming like the 8,000-plus head farm at Nocton, Lincolnshire, and get “cheap” milk; smaller farms with high welfare standards where cows “get out in the summer” but customers pay a little more; or the third option of importing milk from Eastern Europe “to meet the demand for milk that is cheaper than water.”

“We seem to be caught in a very difficult situation,” he said. “The public are happy to pay a fair price, the farmers would like to receive a fair price, but somewhere in the middle someone to trying to get a margin at the expense of everyone else.

“There are people in the industry who want to work hard and produce milk but it is very difficult when long term there is always this pressure, and you’re the wrong side of breaking even.

“As an industry we’re shedding dairy farmers all the time, and as you strip the countryside of livestock, employment in the countryside drops. The people who go out of dairy will not be coming back.”

Harold Woolger, Farmers for Action spokesperson for South Yorkshire said: “Dairy farmers are on a massive downward spiral and they can’t see an end to it.

Graphic breaks down payments to UK farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy

“Pundits are saying that they only way for dairy farming to continue is for them to get bigger, get a bigger herd and become more efficient - but they’ve done that and it’s been a big mistake. They are producing more milk and can’t process it.

“Supermarkets, without a shadow of a doubt, are the ones that have driven down the price of milk by undervaluing it. We can’t carry on with a situation where mik is less valuable than water.

“The supermarkets have nurtured an arrogant attitude where they don’t care about anybody except their shareholders.”