Efficiency and Modernisation Pinned to Indoor Housing

Significant pressure for sustainable intensification is being put on the dairy sector by a range of factors, leaving many cows living indoors.

Higher yielding cows on more efficient farms cannot be sustained by grass alone, according to Maggie March, a senior technician at Scotland’s Rural College, who says that all summer grazing no longer seems to be the predominant system on UK dairy farms.

Traditional pasture farming could be on the way out, suggested Mrs March, as she addressed the British Society for Animal Science Annual Conference in Nottingham last week. The conference was told that quota discontinuation will bring expansion opportunities and consequently greater economies of scale.

The conclusion was that all year round grazing and continuous housing are becoming more common because of their suitability to larger herds.

This aligns with DairyCo and Eurostat data that shows the importance of producing more milk from fewer cows. A 400,000 cow decrease in the UK dairy herd since 2001 is matched by a decrease of more than 4 million dairy cows in the EU-27.

While there are fewer cows, milk delivery figures have been rising over the last decade across Europe. German deliveries (up 2.8 million tonnes) and French increases (up 1.5 million tonnes) contributed to an overall EU milk delivery increase for 2011/12 that was 2.3 per cent than the previous year.

This is largely due to a steady increase in annual per cow output, which in 2011 stood at 7,533 litres/cow/annum in the UK. This, DairyCo says, is over 1000 litres greater than output in 2001.

But, despite huge improvements in efficiency, farmers across Europe are still not getting ‘fair’ prices for the milk they produce.

Spanish farmers, who this week announced they struggled against a liquid price four cents lower than the EU average, have said that to safeguard Spanish farms, French style negotiations should take place, where mediators recommend sustainable price structures to milk buyers.

Stephane Le Foll, the French Agricultural Minister, has publicly supported the 2.5 cent per litre increase that French farmers have achieved for deliveries this spring.

Farm groups argue that Spain has greater production costs because of outdoor grazing conditions and businesses, therefore, hinge on price increases.

Central and northern Europe has a more conducive climate to pasture availability, Spanish farmers Union COAG has argued, which makes ‘spiralling’ feed costs more damaging to Spanish producers.