Support for super dairy.......

County farmer: Why I hope the rejected super-dairy plan doesn't go away...

Stephen Riding, part owner of Bonsdale Farm in Blyton.

PLANS for a super-dairy in Nocton, near Lincoln, have been withdrawn, to the delight of campaigners. But dairy farmer Stephen Riding, from Blyton near Gainsborough, believes that this is bad news for the country’s dairy industry...

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I have been a dairy farmer all my life and have been on this site in Blyton for 31 years with my brother.

We have 200 milking cows across 900 acres.

I was disappointed when it was announced Nocton Dairies Ltd were to withdraw their plans. They really need to go ahead with it, in my opinion as a dairy farmer.

But it was encouraging that the withdrawal was solely down to the objections from the Environment Agency, as it means they could find another site and have another go with it.

The British dairy industry is shrinking and if we carry on the way we are, in another 20 years there won't be any dairy farmers left.

With the supermarkets acting the way they are, the days of the family dairy farm are dying. Someone needs to be prepared to take up the commitment of a big dairy unit.

The Nocton Dairy would have been able to produce milk ten per cent faster than any other dairy and it would have been a real shot in the arm for the industry.

The other thing is, the Nocton Dairy could have been a test to see if the system would work in the UK.

The technology is imported from America where it is mainly used in drier climates. We don't yet know if it will work over here in the UK and the Nocton Dairy could have been a test.

If successful, we could have developed it across the UK and sites like the Nocton Dairy would have become the norm.

When I first heard about the dairy plans my first thought was the groundwater – its Lincoln's drinking water we're talking about.

The Environment Agency should have spoken up and said something sooner if they were going to object, rather than leaving it until the eleventh hour.

The Nocton Dairy would have been the future of British dairy farming, so hopefully Nocton Dairies Ltd can find another location.

Related articles

• Lincolnshire's US-style 'mega' dairy farm on hold as plans are withdrawn (guardian.co.uk)
• Plans for 'mega dairy' scrapped amid fears for the environment (telegraph.co.uk)
• 'Super dairy' plans withdrawn (telegraph.co.uk)
• "Cows Do Not Belong in Fields" - UK Mega-Dairy Renews Application (treehugger.com)
• U.K.'s First Dairy Factory Farm Is Back on the Table (animals.change.org)

New scheme attacked all round.......

Nocton Dairies: Animal welfare lobby slams plans

18 November 2010 | By Alistair Driver

ANIMAL welfare and environmental groups have attacked Nocton Dairies plans, despite the decision to cut cow numbers back by more than half.

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) condemned the revised plans as ‘an unwanted and unnecessary industrialisation of dairy farming’.

Despite the smaller numbers CIWF said its ‘overwhelming concern remains that this is still bad news for the animals and entirely the wrong direction for dairy farming’. 

It expressed fears that ‘this US-style factory farm could set a dangerous precedent for the future of dairy farming in the UK’. Producing milk on this scale would drive the price of a pint of milk down to levels most small farmers could not compete with, it claimed.

It said research had shown the ‘zero-grazing’ system Nocton would deploy is associated with increased risk of many health and welfare problems including lameness, mastitis, reproductive problems and a number of bacterial infections.

CIWF chief executive Philip Lymbery said: “The proposed Nocton development is still the wrong route for dairy farming in Britain. 

“It threatens animal welfare and the countryside, will put hard-pressed family farms under even more pressure, and will undermine the integrity of our milk.

“The proposal remains unwanted, unnecessary and unwelcome. The bottom line is that cows belong in fields not in industrial dairies.”

CIWF campaigns manager Pat Thomas pledged the organisation would be ‘throwing all of our weight behind the battle to stop factory farming coming to the UK’.

Viva! described the decision to halve cows numbers and allow cows outside access at Nocton as a ‘victory of sorts’ but insisted it will continue to fight the plans because of the link between intensive dairy farming and ‘bad cow welfare’.

 “We still object. It is not like we are going to throw up our hands and say it is wonderful what you are doing,” said Viva! campaigns manager, Justin Kerswell.

“The opposition to this project has sent out a very clear message to the dairy industry the British public are not ready for intensive dairy farming.”

The RSPCA said it would not comment directly on the application but stated it does ‘not approve or support systems which house dairy cows for 365 days a year, and they are prohibited by the Society’s welfare standards’.

But it added: “Just because a system is large, does not necessarily make it bad in terms of animal welfare.”

 Friends of the Earth’s food campaigner Sandra Bell said: “Nocton’s promoters have scaled down their plans for now but with a view to expanding them in the future - and they still plan to cram their cows into massive sheds, rather than graze them outdoors.

“The introduction of US-style mega dairies would force small farmers out of business and push the UK’s farming sector further towards crisis.”

Also in: Nocton Dairies: Farmers Plan To Press Ahead With 8,000-Cow Dairy

• Nocton Dairies: Is there a future for super dairies in the UK?

• Nocton Dairies: Will there be a market for milk from super dairies?

• Nocton Dairies: Super dairy could be a cow heaven - David Barnes

• Nocton Dairies: Minimum stress and good nutrition are key to large-scale herd

• Nocton Dairies: What the supermarkets said

• Nocton Dairies: Willes explains decision to cut cow numbers

• Nocton Dairies: The plans in full

• Nocton Dairies: Mixed reaction to 'super dairy' plans

• Nocton Dairies: Super dairies 'worse than organic farms'

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  22 November 2010
  
  

Nocton and the Super Dairy........

Image via Wikipedia

Saturday, October 23, 2010, 07:00

4 comments

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Three reasons why dairy should go down the drain

I AM most impressed with the coverage you have given to the proposed Nocton super-dairy, both for and against.

I am against the idea for several very simple reasons – smells, carbon footprint and jobs.

If the dairy is only going to reduce costs by 10 per cent, why bother?

Canny Scottish farmers are already achieving such savings with herds of no more than 100 cows by installing robot milking parlours.

Guess what – the cows approach the robot when the cow decides it is time to be milked and choose to do so three times a day.

At each milking, the cow is computer monitored for health and the correct amount of food and, in return, gives the farmer more milk for his bucks.

There are a number of advantages to this approach. The cows can collect their own breakfast in the summer months, there are no problems with the neighbours and no logistical problems in getting rid of the slurry.

There are strict legal requirements to be met when slurry is spread on the land and this can be managed easily with a herd of 100 cows.

However, all sorts of problems – including the weather – would make the task more difficult for 8,000. Hence the potential problem with smells.

Secondly, we, the public, are under pressure all the time to reduce our carbon footprint – in our homes, on our holidays and in our cars.

Yet this project will add hundreds of tonnes of carbon to the yearly ratings.

It must surely be far more efficient to let cows fetch their own food, rather than bring it to them in a lorry.

If a carbon tax is introduced, I hope it is added to unnecessary lorry and tractor miles for tasks such as this.

Such a tax would soon transform an 8,000-cow dairy from being a cash- maker to a loss-making enterprise.

Finally, Lincolnshire has two big industries – farming and tourism.

With an annual value of about £1.6bn, farming is the bigger. Tourism is just a whisker under £1bn.

As far as jobs are concerned, the figures are reversed, with 10,000 in agriculture and 17,000 in tourism.

If Lincoln became known as Stinkin Linkin, tourism would certainly suffer.

A small 2.5 per cent drop in visitor numbers could equate to 425 jobs.

That is why Arrow Rock, Missouri, set up a 15-mile exclusion zone from the town centre for such enterprises, to protect its tourist trade. Lincoln should do the same.

Lincolnshire tourism suffered badly in the last foot and mouth epidemic, so why create unnecessary problems now?

While economies of scale appear great at first sight, I would imagine any business this size would be even more vulnerable to supermarket pressure on price than more flexible, smaller units.

Even with 8,000 cows, the dairy will not have power over the market.

Perhaps the directors of Nocton Dairies Ltd could take a trip to Scotland before submitting their application and see how the canny Scottish farmers make more money out of milk and see how they could revise their plans so we could all be happy.

CHRISTOPHER DARCEL Holmfield, Fiskerton.

Related articles

• Company pulls out of 'super dairy' plans (telegraph.co.uk)
• 8,100-Cow 'Super-Dairy' Threatens (the Image of) British Farming (treehugger.com)
• Dairy Factory Farm or Luxury Hotel for Cows? (animals.change.org)
• Industrial dairy farming: Not like grandad's day (economist.com)
• More cows on the Tube (london-underground.blogspot.com)
• A Tale of Two Farms (5minutesforgoinggreen.com)

Nocton Dairies & intensive farming of cows

Image by Momoc HDR via Flickr

The proposal to build an intensive Dairy in Nocton has come in for some criticism and many of the villages in the area are against the scheme.

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