FG 175: A closer look at the changing face of the British dairy industry

1920s

FOLLOWING the First World War came the great agricultural depression.

The dairy industry was fragmented – there was no co-ordinated means of selling milk, and while some of the purchasers, particularly in London, amalgamated and got larger, farmers were very much selling and transporting milk at the price of whatever the purchaser wanted.

Prof Liam Sinclair, principal lecturer in dairy at Harper Adams University, says: “It resulted in a lot of unprofitable times and a lot of people lost money and left the industry.”

The Government provided several different schemes to try and provide more of a framework towards milk pricing, but they were often not adhered to.

1930

THE world’s first rotary parlour was installed on a farm in New Jersey, USA.

1933

THE Agricultural Marketing Act of 1933 was established to place agriculture on a basis of economic equality with other industries.

It brought with it the Milk Marketing Board, which gave structure to the sector and allowed it to become more of an industry, rather than just individuals having some cows and selling milk.

1940s

THE advent of artificial insemination in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a gamechanger in genetic selection.

1950s

POST-war years saw the introduction of milking parlours, and about that time frozen bull semen for use in artificial insemination was also introduced.

1960s

TAKE off of the first herringbone parlours. In 1967, foot-and-mouth disease prompted many farmers who lost their cows during the outbreak to switch to Holstein cows.

1973

WHEN the UK entered the European Economic Community there were a number of incentives for farmers to leave the industry.

Between 1970 and 1980, the number of dairy producers fell from about 100,000 to 56,000.

1977

SHOPLAND Edleet Ruth 6 (owned by Les Smith, Dennis Smith’s father - see in the field panel) was the first, and remains the only cow to be classified the perfect 100 points.

1979

THE Friesian overtook the Dairy Shorthorn and the Ayrshire in popularity, and by 1979 there were more than 200,000 female registrations per year.

1983

THE UK hit its peak milk production of 17 billion litres – the most it has ever produced.

1984

MILK quotas were introduced, which had a large effect on the UK dairy industry.

Quotas caused a big reduction in the number of farmers and, while milk yield did not really change, herd sizes decreased and farmers were only able to produce about 89 per cent of what they had been doing.

Up until 1990, the only real change to the industry was the number of farmers who quit.

1988

BY 1988, records showed 76 per cent of UK dairy cows were parlour milked.

Throughout the 1980s, however, there were still a number of cows which were hand-tied and milked.

1990s

IN 1990 cow numbers started to decrease quite rapidly – and the trend is still ongoing today.

The 1990s saw a development towards a better system of being able to select cows based on their profitability index.

Prof Sinclair says: “That caused quite an increase in what farmers could select for milk production and subsequently helped fertility.”

1993 saw the end of the Milk Marketing Board and, in 1995, the registered number of UK dairy farms was 35,741.

2008

THE industry welcomed the introduction of genomics, which has allowed farmers to select animals more intensively and faster based on their DNA profiles.

2014

MILK producers protested on the streets over the low milk price.

2015

MILK quotas disappeared and farmers were stimulated to increase milk production again. The number of registered dairy farms in England and Wales fell to 9,914.

2016

THE first robotic rotary parlour was installed in the UK.

2019

COMPARED to 1973, milk production has about doubled, herd size has increased by a factor of about four, and the UK is home to six or seven times fewer cows.

There are currently 8,610 producers in the UK.