Farm of the Week: Tough decision for dairy farmer quitting industry

As a respected and experienced farmer with more than 20 years in the business, he has won awards at high profile national and regional shows for the quality of the cattle he rears.

However, faced with a multitude of obstacles and burdens Mr Saxby is quitting farming, leaving his tenancy at Haugh Field Farm based at Coniston Cold near Skipton.

After the horrendous summer of 2008, which saw torrential rain on a regular basis, Mr Saxby could only watch as the hours and days of hard work he put into revamping the grass lands for grazing were destroyed.

The experience left him and his family "feeling like we had had the stuffing kicked out of us" but there were further problems on the horizon.

To take his farm onto the next level, Mr Saxby said it needed "a massive investment", particularly with the need to comply with the new Government regulations regarding nitrate emissions.

Taken together, the run of bad luck with the weather, the challenging conditions that upland farming brings, the pressure to invest in new technology and perils currently affecting the dairy market made for a difficult decision for Mr Saxby, a proud farmer trapped in a difficult position.

Despite having won many awards for his herd of 90 pedigree Jersey cows and dedicating his life to farming, he decided to call it a day.

He and his wife Carole and children Thomas, Hannah and Eleanor are giving up their tenancy and moving on to pastures new.

Mr Saxby said: "We decided that it was time to call it a day. It is going to be a wrench to leave. Our neighbours have been really good.

"There are some great farms around here and some brilliant dairy farms, farming in what is a very hard area. But they are good farms producing great products – we have made friends for life around here.

"When people go into the dairy aisle of the supermarket they are just looking for the nice plastic bottle that contains the milk. They do not look at how much it is going to cost. A few pence here and there does not make a huge difference really.

"I don't think people realise how farms work. You work from when the sun comes up to when the sun goes down.

"To think that we have time to come in and start several hours of paperwork is pretty unrealistic."

The farm has been run to produce quality products to sell into niche markets with an emphasis on being environmentally friendly.

The milk from pedigree Jersey herd is used in products manufactured by Longley Farm.

Alongside the dairy herd Mr Saxby runs a small number of Longhorn cattle and free range hens, selling direct to customers, either on farmers' markets or by courier service.

He established his herd in 1986 with the purchase of just two cows from dispersal sales of the Norwood Park herd, managed by his late father Mick.

The families of the pair, Lily and Cash, prove to be very strong stock right through to today.

1n 1997 the family took up a tenancy at a small holding in Bedale, North Yorkshire, growing the herd from 12 to 50 cows.

Championships at Gargrave Show and the Great Yorkshire Show followed before Mr Saxby took on a management job with the Osberton estate in Nottinghamshire.

He continued to improve his herd and in 2005 moved his family to Haugh Field Farm, which had not been milked on for more than 20 years.

Mr Saxby said that the inaccurate labelling of dairy produce was contributing to the problems facing the sector and that all produce should be accurately branded to reflect where it is from.

"It is an issue that needs looking at, " he said.

"The public is much more interested in that now. They want to know for definite if their food was produced in Britain and even want to know which region to support their local farmers.

"Farm shops selling local produce are enjoying greater support. People no longer want to have prawns from the North Sea that have been sent to the Far East to be processed and back again because it's cheaper than doing it locally. We need to get back to what is important."

However Mr Saxby will not be entirely removed from farming, as he returns to his native Nottinghamshire to manage a farm belonging to a friend of the family.

The fact that even an intelligent and successful farmer such as Mr Saxby is being forced from the industry he loves is a sad indictment of the problems facing the sector.

While it is impossible to avoid or control poor weather and challenging local climates, the burdensome regulations that cause so many headaches for so many farmers can be quite easily overcome by making them more practical and realistic.