Supporting British Farming

Written in November 2024

Today seems an apt day to shine a light on the lack of support for British farmers from the UK Government. How their policies, taxation, and often ridiculous choices have detrimentally affected farming, including a huge loss of British-made products over the past sixty years, nearly decimating the cheese industry along the way.

Across many industry sectors throughout the UK, we have seen the government show no support for British-made products. Offering tenders to outside countries, often for the sake of a few pounds saved while parroting their hypocritical support of British companies. The most recent glaring example of this that I can think of is passports. Need I say more…..

Anyway, back to farming.

Over the past sixty years, farmers have been forced to produce higher quantities to stay in business, adding faster ways to milk and higher yields on less land, but has that reduced the overall quality?

The average herd size for a farmer in 1954 was just 16 cows, and each farm would have been mixed farming, producing beef, milk, arable crops and raising other livestock. Today, the average herd size is 216 cows, with some ‘super’ dairies holding as many as 8000 cows. At those numbers, that’s not sustainable farming; that’s just a factory production line.

The start of this increase in production needs for farmers to stay in business began with The Milk Marketing Board, a government idea to stabilise the milk market by offering dairy farmers a set price for their milk. This meant, in theory, farmers had more financial stability and didn’t need to go to the effort of making cheese anymore to add extra profit, they could milk their cows and get paid. What it also meant, unbeknownst to everyone at the time, was the Milk Marketing Board wanted every farmer to join, so they held the market monopoly, able to make factory-made block cheese fast and sell at whatever price they wanted to. If farmers wanted to make their own cheese with excess milk beyond their contracted production amounts, they had to buy their milk back from the Milk Marketing Board who started to add extra clauses into contracts and make it as difficult as possible for this to happen. They also hounded anyone who had not joined up and claimed sole use of certain words used to describe cheeses, such as Farmhouse, which they used on all their factory-made block cheese and disallowed artisan cheesemakers to use. The milk marketing board finally closed in 1994 after nearly sixty years of tyranny over the cheese industry.

Gradual regrowth has happened since then, with some calling the last fifteen years a cheese renaissance. Yet sadly, many of the recipes and cheese-make knowledge that would have been passed down through the generations has been lost to farm closures.

Unlike France and many countries in the EU who celebrate their products and want to ensure their survival, we seem to have a government that relishes quick decisions for cost-saving initiatives. This isn’t about which party is in power; this has been the same problem across so many industry sectors for the past century and no doubt before then, too.

Do we need to change our culture in how we think about British products? Celebrate the hard work of local small businesses and reduce our product travel miles. I think so, but we need to change the opinions and the culture at the top for long-term sustainability and to see British products and businesses thrive.