Wales has some of the most favourable climates for growing grass in the whole of the UK. It means grass can be grown very efficiently and it makes economic sense to optimise the use of that grass. Dairy farmer numbers in Wales have been falling since the1960s, but there has been a more rapid decline in recent years. The main reason for this has been the downward pressure on milk price and an increase in the cost of production. It was interesting to see that with the 2013-2014 improvement in price the rate of decline slowed down. Wales has always received a lower milk price than areas in England that are closer to the higher density population areas, so making the most of grass to keep production costs down is clearly a priority. Milk from forage usedto be a more common benchmark of performance and still has a very close correlation with profitability on forage based systems. The reason for the reduced interest in milk from forage as a performance indicator has been rhe increase in high input systemswhere milk from forage is not considered to be the right benchmark of performance. However, on grazing and high forage systems 4,000+ litres per cow of milk from forage is achievable.
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