Farmer Focus: Can we be sustainable with milk income shifts?

Production has crashed 10% for July, so now a few (yes, a few) lorry-loads of spot milk is trading at 30p.

But I see no clear signals we will be up 5p/litre by November – and that’s what we need to see for the winter because feed is up, which will add 1-2p to costs.

I met with my accountant last week to discuss our 2015/16 accounts – which were gloomy, to say the least.

I will start with the positives. Our breakeven milk price is 25.5p (currently lower), which was encouraging.

We produced 400,000 litres less milk. If we knock £100,000 off for that, our milk sales were still down £400,000 because of price.

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How can we make our business sustainable with such income shifts?

We really need some kind of futures market as soon as possible. I think our new government is keen on this idea but we need to make sure we get our fair share of funding after Brexit.

I did take time out to promote for Arla on a Saturday afternoon in Glasgow city centre, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

See also: Brexit opportunity to rewrite ag policy

The conversations are great – with the old to the very young alike fascinated with cows.

I would encourage any farmer to meet your consumer whenever there is an opportunity.

I had a chat with my dairy farmer friend in Quebec last week, who told me she was selling 42kg of milk a cow a day on 130 cows at a price of 45p/litre, so I quickly moved on to the weather.

It’s hot so I have decided on a trip to Canada to catch up with my wealthy arable cousin in Manitoba for 10 days in early August.

Since the Livestock Event, we have been looking at collar or tag systems for heat detection/rumination, and wondering whether we could save labour, treat sick cows sooner, and tweak diets quicker. Watch this space. 

Gary Mitchell milks 800 cows, with heifers reared on a local farm. Gary zero-grazes 80ha of the 195ha he owns. He is regional board chairman for NFU Scotland.