![]() 'Farmers’ relentless drive for cost savings has put increasing pressure on the long-suffering dairy cow.' Low-fat milk was on offer at just 32p a pint in Tesco this week. Milk is plentiful and cheap, with supermarkets frequently using it as a loss-leader in their battle for market share. ![]() No doubt classical economists view all this as a triumph of efficient food production. The farmers who survive the inevitable war of attrition are forced to squeeze more and more milk from their over-worked cows.Įven then they struggle to earn a living from the job, as yesterday’s gathering in Westminster of militant dairy farmers - who forced farming minister Jim Paice to admit he did not know the cost of a pinta, and are now threatening to disrupt the Olympics - testifies. Today’s milk business is dominated by a handful of large supermarkets and processing dairies, all slugging it out for a share of the action. I’ve known dozens of farming families who’ve been forced to put their beloved herds under the auctioneer’s hammer - families who loved their animals, cared for the countryside and took pride in the fine food they produced. During my 40 years as a farming journalist, nine out of ten dairy farms have gone out of business. Since then, dairy farming has changed beyond recognition. Though the pre-war economy was deep in recession, it was a period of expansion in the British dairy industry.īy the time my brother and I were racing each other to the morning pintas, our Berkshire dairy was supplying half the town.Įverywhere in Britain - outside the biggest cities - milk was mostly local and from cows spending most of the year grazing fresh green grass. ![]() Then, as now, milk producers were being crippled by rising costs and the meagre prices paid by powerful dairy companies.Įntrepreneurial farmers responded by setting up retail rounds in nearby towns and villages in a bid to make a better living for their families. The dairy had been set up by a local farmer in the 1920s. In those days, full-fat milk was considered a ‘protective food’, one that would keep you fit and free of disease.Īll I know is that my brother and I invariably squabbled over who was to get ‘the top of the milk’ on our breakfast porridge. Our two pints of silver top would arrive daily on the doorstep, each with a thick band of yellow cream stretching one-third of the way down the bottle - a sure sign that the cows had been grazing up to their hocks in clover-rich grassland. On the Reading estate where I grew up in the early 1950s, our milk was from a local dairy. 'The nutritional quality of most supermarket milk wouldn't hold a candle to the pinta delivered to our doorstep all those years ago'
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