It never ceases to amaze me that by trying to better understand the needs of natural systems and working with them, the outcomes (eventually!) are invariably good. Not just good, but even better than when we try to control nature.
Okay, what am I talking about? Well, firstly when, twenty-five years ago, we went cold turkey on fertilisers and pesticides, the results were grim. Production of our pastures fell by a third and we had to sell a lot of stock off the farm. But gradually as the soils healed and our pastures became more diverse, the productivity of the farm recovered to the point that we are now achieving production levels every bit as good as when we used these pretty toxic chemicals.
Not only that, but our soils are locking up carbon and the biodiversity on the farm has increased by a ‘remarkable’ 50%, and we have the data to prove it! In fact, we are one of the very few dairy farms in Europe to be independently assessed as being ‘net zero’. All our farm products – milk, beef, lamb - have a zero-carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, it took us at least 10 years to turn the thing around, but we didn’t really know what we were doing, and the technical guidance was pretty basic twenty-five years ago. We know better now, but I’m sure there’s plenty more to discover.
It was seeing how the farm performed without the chemicals and all our interference that gave us the courage to invest all our energies and money (well the bank’s money!) in trying to get leaving the calves with their mothers, to work. If we thought organic farming was poorly signposted, cow with calf dairying was almost a complete unknown.
Actually, when we were planning the new dairy, we didn’t tell the bank about the cow with calf bit. We thought they’d panic and pull the plug on us. We knew it would put us under extreme financial pressure, so we went to private sources, and they weren’t cheap. Seven and a half percent over base, but it was unsecured, so that was the price.
We figured this was a whole farm experiment and applied for research and development funding from Horizon 2020. We scored well on the application until it came to the roll-out, IP, scalability, jobs and growth bit. This was about developing an efficient, high welfare, sustainable dairy system, not the production of fancy technology, so nil points!
We approached numerous organisations and academics, and while there was some sympathy and interest, funding a high risk project like this was out of the question. It was a crazy concept. Leaving the calf with its mother for 5 or 6 months when it would be drinking so much of the milk. It could never work!
And yet, work it has. It took an abandoned trial in 2012/13, then 5 years of chaos from 2016 and now 4 years of fine tuning to really see the potential of cow with calf dairying.
Cows producing substantially more milk than we could have hoped for through the effects of suckling and a low stress system. Calves that thrive and grow more than twice as fast on their mothers’ milk and patent affection, than before.
The result is a model of dairy milk and beef production that is more productive than before, delivering serious benefits to our cows and calves and to us who work with it.
This all occurred against a backdrop of industry hostility and academic scepticism, but that is changing.
Something is happening. Not just in the UK, but across Europe and North America. It started as a trickle 4 or 5 years ago and while it is still small, the interest is growing steadily.
The data that we and others are producing is stirring serious interest in the academic community, and those academics who showed interest a few years ago are now sitting up and taking notice.
The recently launched European initiative, ‘Transform Dairy’ has several hubs gathering this data to piece together best practice and disseminate it across the industry. A North American hub is also feeding into this project.
Charles Ellett, our herd manager, has been instrumental in getting our model running effectively and is an active participant in the ‘Cow-Calf Contact’ project.
Researchers from Denmark visited us recently on a fact-finding mission and reported back that, ‘Thank you so much for a wonderful visit. We both agree that it is one of those experiences that will stay with us for a long time. We feel that you have managed to establish a very sustainable system, and we look forward to sharing our insights from the visit with colleagues, researchers, and farmers in Denmark, as well as our broader network.’
Getting independent academic verification that this is a valid system of dairying, not just a gimmick, is great, but there has also been quite a bit of interest from students and young farmers this year. Things are beginning to change. Slowly, very slowly, but surely, things are beginning to happen.
As some of you will have noticed, our blog post a few weeks ago about this went viral on Facebook. Initially we feared that we were under attack, there were lots of negative comments, many from vegan activists. But that post reached nearly half a million people, and of the 6000+ engagements received, over 98% were positive.
Perhaps it’s not too naïve to believe that one day, this way of farming really could transform dairy?