Every tenth dairy farmer is considering leaving

Apparently, almost every tenth dairy farmer is toying with the idea of ​​stopping milk production by 2025. This emerges from the published results of a survey conducted by the English Farmers’ Federation (NFU) among 600 farmers.

Insufficient yields, volatile markets and the scale of investment required are making farmers reconsider staying in the dairy sector. According to the NFU, more than half of the producers cited the reason for a possible halt in milk production as being that they were unable to keep up with the level of investment required to enable farms to comply with legal regulations. This applies above all to investments in manure storage.

84% of those surveyed are also concerned about rising animal feed prices, 83% about energy costs, and 74% about spending on fertilizers. However, more than a third of the farmers who wanted to stop production did so because they were retired, according to the association.

One-fifth of all farmers surveyed wanted to hand over their farm to the next generation. In addition to those who wanted to stop milk production altogether, 23% of respondents said they were not sure about continuing production beyond the next two years, according to the NFU.

According to him, farmers who have smaller herds of cows and produce less than 1 million kilograms of raw milk annually said they also want to stop milk production before March 2025 than their colleagues who have a larger herd of cows.

The UK Agriculture and Horticultural Promotion Organization (AHDB) estimates that there are currently around 7,500 dairy producers in the UK; That is, 4.8% less than the previous year. About 14.9 million kg of raw milk was produced in 2021/22 milk year.