Most days I feel overriding gratitide for the opportunity we have been given to live and work on this farm.
But today is not one of those days.
The motivation to persist in farming is often fuelled by a desire to maintain it for the next generation.
Today I want to spare them from it.
It costs on average around 49 pence for a farmer to produce a litre of milk in the UK.
As of next month the standard milk price will drop by 6 pence to 36 pence per litre for hundreds of British farmers.
That's 13 pence per litre less than the average cost of prodction.
For a small dairy farm milking 120 cows this translates to roughly £11,000 less than is needed to break even per month.
Undeniable proof that the Fair Dealing Obligation (milk) regulations of 2024 is not worth the paper upon which it was written.
A step in the right direction perhaps, but one with very little in the way of positive impact for farmers on the ground.
Instead of providing legislation to prevent unfair treatment of dairy farmers, all the government have imposed is a law which requires processors and supermarkets to have an updated, written contract with their farmer suppliers.
And here's the real kicker.
Rather than these new contracts (rolled out across England this Summer) offering any meaningful protection for farmers as the legislation intimated, the dominating theme across most of them was to obligate farmers to agree, in a round about way, to continue operating under exactly the same conditions as before.
And as producers of a perishable product, with no alternative outlet through which to trade their milk, there was effectively no choice for farmers other than to agree to the terms and sign up to the contracts they were offered.
The downturn in milk price we are seeing across the industry this autumn is being blamed, for the most part, on strong UK and European milk production, compounded by dairy imports from the US.
But none of this offers much consolation to the dairy farmers being forced to soak up the shortfall.
Not when they can walk into any given supermarket and see milk on sale for anything up to £1.80 per litre.
And what will this mean for the men and women already working 90 hour weeks at below minimum wage, 365 days of the year?
It will mean ends that dont meet, tightening of belts that are already tight and doubling down on limited resources.
It will mean challenging their resilience, sacrificing more of their overstretched time, holding back on the hired help they desperately need and trimming back the scant wages they already struggle to pay themselves.
How on earth can this possibly be the best the British government are willing to achieve in the pursuit of fair dealings for our farmers?
More must be done.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
NFU - National Farmers' Union
Back British Farming NFU
Karen Bradley MP
Emma Reynolds Mp
Angela Eagle MP
Daniel Zeichner MP (Cambridge)
#SupplyChainFairness
#Fairtrade
#PlayFair
#BritishDairy
#Together
#FarmerResilience
#FairDealings
#TimeForChange
#EnoughIsEnough
#DoBetterForFarmers
#RegulateTheSupplyChain
