Thatcher Cow

Punctuation available on request.

Anthony Bradley writes:

Your leader column was an interesting if rose-tinted take on the last 30 years of the British dairy industry (In praise of... British cheeses, 31 December). One cannot argue with Juliet Harbutt, the organiser of the British Cheese Awards, that having a choice of over 700 British cheeses is a cause for celebration – "the poor French have only 600" – especially as sales are still robust despite the recession. It is a testament to the resilience and entrepreneurial flair of many farm businesses. But there was a cost.

You asked: "What brought about the change?" and cited "1980s EU milk quotas, which forced dairy farms to diversify, followed by the breaking in the 1990s of the buying power of the old Milk Marketing Board". But this isn't the whole story.

Twenty-seven years ago I returned from university to the family farm, in the Yorkshire Dales, and milking cows. My brother and I were the fifth generation to farm there. When quotas arrived, business growth was in fact more difficult, because to produce more milk meant buying or leasing more quota. This felt particularly iniquitous as Britain only had quota for 80% of our demand, to allow the continued import of New Zealand butter.

Then Mrs Thatcher decided to abolish the Milk Marketing Board. In the 1930s our grandad could remember putting milk and butter on the train and sending it to Bradford or Leeds. But some days it was sent back, without payment, and the family pig had a large meal. This abuse of market power, made worse by dealing with a perishable product, was one of the reasons the board was established. It took the uncertainty out of the market and allowed farmers to plan. This was vital, as a cow cannot be switched off when your milk buyer changes their mind. The MMB pooled all the milk and then marketed it together.

The modern twist has been the emergence of the supermarkets, which dictate the price they will pay for commodities like milk. With no MMB as the counterbalance, in 2000 our farm's milk price began a drop of 40% in 18 months. To a medium-sized family farm like ours, £50,000 per annum effectively walked off the farm. To really rub it in, as we were tenants our balance sheet was largely made up of cattle, whose value dropped with the milk price. That was the end for us as dairy farmers.

This little story from Yorkshire was repeated around the country around 30,000 times – that's three-quarters of all dairy farms that were milking cows in 1983, when quotas were introduced. The personal cost in many cases was depression and even suicide.

There are several ironies that flow from this. This country no longer has enough cows to fill our quota, never mind fulfil national demand. Those farmers who are still dairying have often intensified their systems and are feeding their cows with soya grown on land that was formerly the rainforest of South America. The supreme irony is that as farmers we now receive environmental payments to maintain the biodiversity of our farms. This includes schemes to encourage the grazing of, yes, cattle.