Dairy farmers quitting the industry in high numbers.

sidjon said:

Had a good relationship with Lloyd's until last 18 months, they nearly cost us our business with a clerical mistake on their part( Bank manager was sacked), had two different ones since and was trying to purchase next-door and they them to be making getting a short term loan as hard as possible ( have good accounts/business plans) , looking for new bank now, but was going to wait until we purchased next-door or it falls flat on it arse ( dealing with family members )

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Tim G said:

If anyone thinks a 100k isn't alot of money, I'll gladly take it off them!

I imagine there will be several farms needing 100k more just to function with higher feed, fert and fuel prices.

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Jdunn55 said:

100k is a massive amount on a 5 year tenancy
£200/cow/year for me
Not viable

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jimmer said:

Dig a hole, put liner in it, worry about regs/planning afterwards
What they gonna do tell you to not to use it and cause pollution instead

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eulb said:

Moneys like water here,it flows in and out of my account.

My milk price is currently 10ppl higher than last year,when I started in 2002 my 1st milk cheque was 12.4p,not many litres as I was milking 17 at the time.

Only 14 years ago I put a new 150 cow shed up without landlords permission,I wasn’t even the tenant,looking back it was a daft thing to do but I could afford to do it,so I did,I also built a 625k gallon lined lagoon at the time.
Worked out fine in the end.

I know a chap who dug a 7 acre lagoon without planning,the Ea and local planners didn’t know what to do,it’s still being used.

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jimmer said:

Dig a hole, put liner in it, worry about regs/planning afterwards
What they gonna do tell you to not to use it and cause pollution instead

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jimmer said:

Digger and dozer turned up here today

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som farmer said:

after experiencing that #unt from EA, l would do everything by the book. He 'condemned' 2 silage pits, and rung up, after 1st cut, 'l expect you filled that clamp, with your first cut', luckily not. He condemned a lot of silage pits, 5 on one farm. He kept on to us, 18 months ? At one stage he was insisting we empty our lagoon, and pay for a professional to measure it, in the closed period, that was a complaint, to his boss, so we didn't have to.
But, if he found a pit, without p/p or EA approval, l have no doubt he would force you to stop using it. He hated our lagoon, it measured bigger on the ground, than it did in his aerial photo.
So, he was sure that, it was dug after 1995, and had been enlarged since 2005, demanded to know its lining, - clay, where did the clay come from, - council dumped it here in the 60's, he could have been right, but he couldn't prove it
its never worth the hassle, do it by the book, that book is only going to get tighter. We know what the EA want, with the autumn spreading fiasco.

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eulb said:

you should have knocked his lights out,he wouldn’t have been half the bother then.

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sidjon said:

Dave doing it?

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jerseycowsman said:

I’ve gotta keep going, there’s no other way I can pay the mortgage apart from milking cows.
I do like it and think I would soon get very bored doing a normal job, but I also do think why the hell do I bother sometimes as well, especially after a pen pusher has just tried to tell you what your doing is wrong, or killing the planet and all that

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Bruce Almighty said:

Nobody knows what the new covered lagoon regs are, including those that enforce it.

I have heard on more than one occasion that spreading chopped straw on top of a lagoon is adequate cover.
I've no idea if that is right or wrong & I don't think any authorities have either.

When certain foods gets short, the penny will finally drop with the clowns that run our country.

(I have a near neighbour who is a retired civil servant, ex chief inspector of schools in a Labour government. Absolute turd of a man. The first time I met him I was hanging 2 gates at his partner's stables. Job done in an hour, ex civil servant says "I don't know how you did it so quickly, it would have taken me 24 hours just to even think about it, let alone do it. I'm not a practical person")

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Princess Pooper said:

Big set up near here, 600 cows, mainly owned, went through a big investment and expansion in the last decade, farmer is only middle aged. Selling some land, slashing cow numbers to 300, another farmer who has his own herd elsewhere locally will run the dairy enterprise (not sure if managing, renting or joint venture).

Problems finding good staff cited as main reason.

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Princess Pooper said:

Big set up near here, 600 cows, mainly owned, went through a big investment and expansion in the last decade, farmer is only middle aged. Selling some land, slashing cow numbers to 300, another farmer who has his own herd elsewhere locally will run the dairy enterprise (not sure if managing, renting or joint venture).

Problems finding good staff cited as main reason.

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coomoo said:

Bank

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Princess Pooper said:

Can't comment on that other than if all of a sudden your long term plan for paying off the debt for the investment has to change then, it makes sense to get that paid off, by selling land. There were definitely staff issues.

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jendan said:

Selling off land to pay off debt is a total disaster! You have CGT to pay afterwards,which will mean you will have to sell some more land to pay it......................and so on. The Bank will almost certainly have caused it,because they want some or all of their money back.The Banks get their special managers in when it gets that far.Its basically recovery........................after they have forced you to get consultants in(which is even more £1,000s wasted)

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In the pit said:

I think farmers today are going to have to find a way of working together, whether it be working with the beef boys to give them quality calves of the right breed to work with or the arable boys in swapping corn/straw for somewhere to export slurry/fym to
Things in the industry are going to have to be more sustainable and there’s going to have to be less red tape/form filling
There’s a lot to learn from what we’re going through at the moment
Normally by now we’d be looking at putting out second dose of fert on but as yet we’ve grown similar or slightly more grass from slurry alone and going forward soils with high ph and p&k levels will grow clover which in turn will grow more grass with less reliance on bought in fert
It was to easy before to pick up the phone and get your fert /cow cake spoon fed to you cheap , now we’re probably reverting back to farming how we did years ago
There’s a lot of farmers out there at that age with no family to take over who see selling up is the best option and who can blame them really

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