'Why dairy farmers have become commodity slaves'

摘要

I believe UK dairy farmers have become commodity slaves, trapped in farming systems. We have been forced into this position by brutal price pressures from milkbuyers and damaging consumer preference for dishonestly priced, but apparently ever cheaper,dairy products. The truth is these trends have accelerated for most of my career. Dairy farming intensification has led not only to overproduction, but increasingly to 'cow stories' we wouldn't want our consumers to know about One shocking statistic isthat more than 50% of the milk produced in the UK now comes from permanently housed herds.I went into milk production in 1973 with 30 Ayrshires and decided to farm sustainably, but I quickly learned our practices were less profitable thanthoseofourmore 'conventional' neighbours. So we decided to write a prescription for sustainable dairy farming, which ended up becoming the world's first draft of the organic dairy standards, and which gave us a better price for our milk.