Letter from Europe: Is Britain's proposed 8,000-cow dairy the shape of things to come?

Monday, August 9, 2010

The eyes of European milk producers are on eastern England, where a group of farmers plan a revolutionary $70-million dairy that will produce up to 100 million litres of milk annually from a single site

by NORMAN DUNN

As far as western Europe is concerned, a new milk production business being planned for eastern England offers an avalanche of innovations.

The so-called Nocton Dairy in Robin Hood country, near Lincoln, aims for 8,100 high-production cows on a single site. Milking at any one time will be up to 7,000 head run thrice daily through two 80-point rotary stands.

Including the cows, the brand new site will cost an estimated C$70 million before it's in full swing. Livestock is to be housed year-round in deep sand stalls in open-sided barns with moveable netting side screens for shelter when the weather gets wintry.

Crop farmers on surrounding land will contract-grow corn and lucerne forage. A nearby sugar beet processing plant will also supply feed. The workforce is expected to total around 80 including a full-time vet, AI team and a hoof trimmer crew.

Planning permission was refused by the local council in May, but is to be reconsidered in July. To put the scale of this proposed development into perspective, the average European dairy farm at this time milks around 60 cows.

In Britain, this figure is approaching 100, in eastern Germany (which has the biggest dairy herds in Europe) just over 200.

"We're aiming at a new direction for milk production in Europe," explains farm business adviser Graeme Surtees. He's helping three farmer partners who are involved in financing the Nocton Dairy concept. Two of the farmers already milk some 4,000 cows in other enterprises in Britain. The third is a large-scale crop producer.

"Reducing farming's carbon footprint and increasing animal welfare are major arguments for its size and its situation. After all, this facility is to be situated in one of the most intensive crop production areas in the country, with hardly an animal to be seen for miles," he adds.

"By peak production, we'll be trucking out probably 250,000 litres of milk daily. This will mean just one collection point each day, saving thousands of miles in tanker journeys if this amount was to be produced in dozens of smaller farms."

Surtees says that marketing this amount of milk has presented no problems. "We are in talks with two or three of the largest processors in the country and it is already clear that our milk will be going straight onto the liquid market. Nor are we putting smaller-scale dairy businesses out of business, because the dairy sector in Britain annually loses the amount of milk we're going to be producing through farmers giving up."

The farm's planned biogas power station, which will use all manure produced on the site, will save even more fuel and reduce climate-warming methane gas output. This should produce an annual two megawatts of electricity, enough to power all milking and cooling operations and leave enough power over for around 2,000 local households.

The neighbourhood is an intensive flower, sugar beet and vegetable growing area. Local farmers are already welcoming the chance of widening their rotations with fodder crops on contract for the dairy, with all the advantages in fertility this can offer.

Very large dairy units are also attractive for agricultural areas already badly affected by population drift from the land. "The 80 or more jobs will be year-round and that's unusual for this part of the country," explains Graeme Surtees. "Nocton will also be hiring locally and conducting its own training with in-house facilities and a direct teaching connection with a nearby veterinary college."

The partners are spending a lot of time in ensuring top welfare conditions for the cattle, too. The animals are to be split into herds of 500 head. The milking routine and box stall/feeding fence layout is so designed that batches of cows spend only 35 minutes on average from leaving their barn to returning after milking.

Deep sand bedding has been chosen because studies have shown farmers that this offers most comfort and hygiene compared with straw bedding or mattresses. A new sand cleaning and recycling system has also been ordered for the giant dairy farm.

"For the future dairy business we're sure that this 'big' cannot be bad," concludes Surtees. "The concept offers a lot of advantages for the milk production business, the cows themselves and the environment." BF

Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.