‘I find it hard to understand the lack of rationality in the industry’

Emma King lives on a farm in Dorset that has been in her husband’s family for generations. “I had never really seen a cow until I was 30. I was living in Windsor working as a retirement consultant for an actuarial firm. Then I met my husband and gave it all up to be a farmer’s wife on a family farm where three generations currently live. It has been a huge learning curve, but one without regret.”

As a dairy farmer Emma highlights the daily struggles the UK industry is facing, and feels there needs to be more support offered to British farmers. “Supermarkets use their aligned producers as a convenient PR story to say they are supporting and paying a fair price. Yet around the corner in the cheese counter they have cheese that has been produced below the cost of production as the supermarkets buyers have forced the price down. This means that a select few dairy farmers have a milk price that covers costs and the rest of us are making daily losses. I find it hard to understand the lack of rationality in the industry. The UK does not produce enough milk to meet its own dairy industry demands (products as well as liquids) so why import more than the difference between supply and demand?”

With her two young children taking a real interest in farming, Emma hopes they can keep the family farm going for future generations. “My children are eight and six years old and they love the farm. My in-laws are both in their 80s and are still helping out.”

Emma King gave up city life to be a farmer’s wife

While she wouldn’t want anyone on COP (cost of production) contracts to lose out, Emma believes the Milk Marketing Board should be resurrected. “The main challenge is that while the price per litre goes down, it’s very hard to save on any of our overheads, which keep going up. Dairy farmers look after much of the countryside for future generations. All that is needed is for the UK to supply itself first, then import the difference. Then there wouldn’t be a surplus problem.”

On the subject of Britain potentially voting to leave the EU, Emma is basing her opinion on past promises made to the industry. “I don’t comment much as everyone is so biased or scared to appear so. There are valid arguments both for and against, based on past promises. We can only base our decision on what being part of the EU has done for us in the past. It’s time the UK government offered more support to the country’s farming industry.”

‘Our whole way of life is being pulled from under our feet’

Lindsey is a dairy and sheep farmer in Staffordshire. Her family runs a farm with 60 milking cows. “My husband’s family has been in dairy for the past 100 years. We work 24/7 every single day of the year, there’s no such thing as weekend work or ‘working a bank holiday’. We work every day, full stop.” Lindsey reveals that they are having to leave dairying this year because of the crippling milk price they receive. “Global overproduction is the basic problem. Bringing back milk quotas and the MMB is the only way this will likely be tackled. Farmers can’t simply cut production because, if they send less, they get paid even less and then they simply couldn’t afford to be in milk. Processors and consumers need to back British produce, but supermarket price wars are devastating the supply chain.”

Aside from the price of milk, there are other concerns facing British farmers in terms of the cost of cattle and the spread of tuberculosis among the animals. “The days of the dispersal sale are numbered due to the vast volumes of cows for sale. The very real alternative is to send whole herds of cattle straight to slaughter because nobody is buying cows for milking at anything other than rock-bottom prices, and no farmer wants to do that. We’ve also been closed up for the last six months with TB so have been unable to sell stock to the normal markets. We are a closed herd, so the disease has come from either the badger or deer population, both of which are heavily present on the farm. Farmers buying in from all over will increase the risk of TB spreading.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Thank you for your support’. Farmers at the recent Farming to London march. Photograph: Ellie Britton

There is a real danger that Lindsey’s family will not be able to keep the farm going long enough for her two young daughters to have the opportunity of keeping it running. “My eldest is two and a half and she can tell you everything there is to know about our cows, our machines and what we do on the farm. She knows about the calving, feeding, bedding, milking, medicines and safety. For that not to be part of her future makes me break down in tears. Our youngest daughter will not remember anything about the dairy herd. It will sadly be long gone. Our whole way of life is being pulled from under our feet. My father-in-law has advanced dementia, which is a blessing because it would destroy him if he knew the current situation.”

Despite the current pressures on British farmers, Lindsey is not sure Britain leaving the EU would make it better. “The worst-case scenario is that the subsidies will go and then, frankly, so will farming. Subsidies are unpopular with the public, but without it last year we would have had to shut shop with immediate effect. It is a literal lifeline in times of dire market failure such as we have now. We are making a loss, and nobody can push their bodies to the absolute limits for the sake of losing money. We are landowners, but we are not wealthy. Our money goes back into the farm. And we simply want to be able to afford to keep going; to keep the farm for our children, as my husband’s family did for him.”

‘The whole community of farming is in danger of being lost’

Ellie Britton is the daughter of a dairy farming family in Ripon, North Yorkshire. She recently attended the Farming to London march held last month. “I went down to London with five friends, who are all either local dairy farmers or studying agriculture. We set off at half-five in the morning. It was a fantastic experience seeing so many farmers rallying together. We definitely got London to listen to us. Let’s just hope the prime minister does.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ellie Britton with her brother, Charlie

Ellie’s family keeps 200 cows on its farm. She wants to keep the farm going after finishing her studies around food and agriculture, but fears that family farms will be a thing of the past if nothing changes. “I’ve lived at the farm all my life. My dad and uncle are third-generation farmers. But I think dairy farmers will dwindle in numbers as you need to make a profit to keep going. Many farmers aren’t making enough. The big 1,000-cow dairy farms have less production costs and therefore dominate the market, taking over little family-based ones. The whole community of farming is in danger of being lost.”

‘I spent more time doing paperwork than I did enjoying watching my animals progress’

As the son of an arable farmer, Matt Titmuss was born and raised at Almshoebury farm in rural Hertfordshire. But he had to persuade his father to let him take over the family business. “My father saw no future in farming, so my parents tried pushing me away from it, and instead told me to do whatever I wanted to do, career-wise. So I spent two years in event production and sound in London, and two years in Guernsey working on farms and in a pub. My father and his older brother ran the farm until my uncle sadly died. My father had no choice but to take over the farm, and having seen what he and my family went through, I had no other thought than to help out. It was the only decision.”

While rising costs are an issue, Matt believes that his farming work is made more difficult by unnecessary red tape and paperwork surrounding the farming sector. “At the age of 21 I went into the rare-breed pork and beef industry. There was enough paperwork involved rearing an animal at the time, but I had a passion for it. Then it got worse, with more and more people turning up to inspect the paperwork rather than the stock. I spent more time doing paperwork than I did enjoying watching my animals progress. In the end I gave it all up.”

‘We definitely got London to listen to us,’ says Ellie Britton of the recent Farming to London march. Photograph: Ellie Britton

Matt and his father are now arable farmers only, and he has concerns about what is currently exported and imported in the industry. “The fact that cereals cost more to produce than we sell them for is an obvious worry. As much as 90% of what we produce is sold for export, but some of this in turn gets imported back to Britain costing more money.” Matt is still worried about the large amount of paperwork. “We’re farmers, not accountants. I understand the logic behind having to document our grain stores, but the current level of paperwork that needs filling in is excessive.”

Matt believes the government must do a lot more to support British farmers. “The government came up with a 12-year plan for farming. Thirty per cent of farmers included in that probably won’t be here in 12 months. And they are doing very little about it. Aside from the current export/import problem, they need to encourage supermarkets to use 70% British produce and 30% import. They also need to stop pushing the supermarkets to have such a high expectation of what their meat should look like. As farmers, we’re not asking for handouts. We just want to be left alone, with less crippling paperwork and better opportunities of meeting our running costs and making some sort of profit.”

Matt believes the EU argument goes both ways. “We could leave and be self-sufficient and finally pay money for what produce is worth. But you will always have someone selling it cheaper to import it, so it won’t solve anything. Subsidies will remain what they are, whether we are in or out. In an ideal world I think we should come out of the EU and put a cap on what is imported. It’s fair on everyone if you put a cap on supermarkets only being able to import a fixed amount per company over a general percentage for the country. Dairy prices will rise, meat prices will rise, crop prices will rise. I only hope that they would rise enough for farmers to earn a living feeding the country’s population, rather than what we have now.”

As much as his parents tried to push him away from farming, Matt feels he was born and bred to do it, and despite the current difficulties he still feels the same. “We currently only farm 1,000 acres [400 hectares]. We simply cannot afford to employ more than two members of staff. So it’s only myself and my father on the farm. Both of us on near to minimum wage. It’s definitely love, not money. The fact that I am a fourth-generation farmer on a family farm dating back to the Domesday Book, and to have the thought in my head that after all this time it will get to my name and end, is sickening.”

‘The government are taking away a great opportunity for families’

Ashley Wheeler has been running a horticultural business at Trill farm in Devon for the last six years. “My parents were organic growers for around 25 years. Having been brought up on an organic holding in Sussex, I wanted to be a grower from a fairly early age.”

While he shares the concerns of dairy farmers regarding milk prices, he is worried about the overall state of the British farming industry. “Farmers and growers are not getting enough support from the government. They are being driven to either ‘get big or get out’, while the livelihoods of smaller-scale, traditional family farms are being undermined and undervalued. The government’s drive for ‘sustainable intensification’ and focus on the commodification of food is leading to the demise of family farms. No clearer is this seen than in the dairy industry at the moment.”

Ashley thinks the decision of the UK government to scrap subsidy payments to farms under five hectares [12 acres] is a case in point. “Large numbers of small-scale family farms are not eligible for farming subsidies. I run a small vegetable-growing business with my family that earns us a living as well as providing labour for local people. We turn over around £50,000 worth of vegetables from just 1.5 acres of cultivated ground. It simply cannot be argued that we are ‘hobby farmers’, as we have been labelled in the past.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ashley Wheeler with his girlfriend and business partner, Kate Norman, and their sons Digby and Winstanley

The alarming rate at which council farms are being sold off will also have a detrimental effect on future generations of British farming, he says. “The government is taking away a great opportunity for families, especially young families and new entrants into farming, to start farming land without having to buy it. Land has become so overpriced that it is unaffordable for many farmers to buy a farm now. Equally, planning laws mean that it is very difficult for aspiring farmers and growers to buy land and build their own house on it. Land price has more than doubled over the last 10 years, which means more traditional family farms have their wealth tied up in the land and property. It is very tempting for such farmers to sell up rather than handing down their farms to the next generation.”

On the subject of Britain’s EU membership, Ashley believes the country would be better off remaining part of it. “I think both people and the environment would be better served if we were to stay in the EU, albeit a reformed version of it. There are currently EU regulations on farming that concern the soil, animal welfare, water and wildlife. If we were to leave the EU, it is very possible that these regulations would be diluted. There are also environmental health regulations that must be adhered to as part of the EU. Although some of these can cause issues for smaller farmers, many of them protect consumers from unproven food and farming techniques – GM and chlorinated meat processing are good examples. If the UK were to leave the EU, some of these regulations would most likely be relaxed, which could be catastrophic for the environment and consumers. It’s also possible that tariffs would be cut and farmers would be exposed to global competition. Most likely this would result in imports of cheaper food produced by industrial agriculture, with lower animal welfare, environmental health regulations and the like. This would price many British farmers out of the market.”