In any season, but especially in spring and summer, an English country cowshed is a haven of harmless contentment whose inhabitants – happily ruminating, farting, chewing and pissing – contribute to an unmistakable atmosphere of wellbeing.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that “Cowshed” should also be a trendy beauty brand. But for how much longer? Lately, the world of the cow has been in crisis, with dairy farming in trouble, and a timeless way of life threatened by relentless supermarket price wars and the march of technology.
Consider the ruthless economics of agriculture today. Four pints of milk cost about 68p to produce. Sainsbury’s pay just 72p for four pints, but Aldi, Lidl and Iceland between 56p and 59p, and it’s not enough. The result has been a steady rate of attrition across the countryside.
In 1995, there were about 35,000 dairy producers in the UK, principally in the north-west (especially Cumbria and the Scottish border country) and the south-west, notably Devon. According to the National Farmers’ Union, this figure has now fallen below 10,000, with predictions that it will be down to 5,000 by 2025. In other words, cows’ milk is a boutique business heading for the knacker’s yard.
The future does not look bright. Beyond the combes of Devon, mega-farms are seen by some agricultural entrepreneurs as the way forward. By 2013, in the UK, there were still only a relatively small number of super-large farms in operation: just 17 of the UK’s dairy herds had more than 1,000 cattle.
American-style mega farming is controversial. At the village of Nocton in Lincolnshire, a proposal for an 8,000-cow mega-farm producing a quarter of a million litres a week was withdrawn after a vociferous protest campaign that labelled it “a battery farm for cows”. Economies of scale, however, must threaten rural tradition, and some experiments in a new kind of brutal agriculture geared to efficiency and, above all, a better yield – no longer seem to be the stuff of pastoral dystopias.
Meanwhile, in a global market, Britain’s 1.84 million dairy cows remain a privileged minority: there are 45.2 million, 22.8 million and 14.7 million, in India, Brazil and Sudan respectively. China’s milk herd alone is 14 million cows, producing 36 billion litres of milk a year. Internationally, Britain’s dairy farmers also face competition from the Baltic states (Estonia and Lithuania will sell their milk for 16p a pint) and the giant agribusinesses of the USA.
The world market should perhaps offer a lifeline (UK dairy exports have risen 39% since 2009), but in global agriculture there’s no room for the old ways of Merrie England. Our cows have come to symbolise this threat.
The British cow comes in many guises. Dexters and Jerseys are smaller and lighter; the Angus, Hereford and Shorthorn, the most common British breeds, are outweighed by hefty continental cattle such as Charolais, Limousin, Marchigiana and Belgian Blue.
British or French, all are tightly braided into our consciousness. Since medieval times, the cow has come to represent the independence of Everyman. Inevitably, their plight has inspired acres of commentary, many apocalyptic headlines, and now a new plotline in the national conversation. Ruth in The Archers has recently become part of a spirited debate about the robots that do the milking.
How much worse can it get?
The dairy farms of Devon, especially in the South Hams, on the edge of Dartmoor, stand in the front line of the milk wars. As the grey forces of winter slowly retire, and sweet spring weather lights up the stony landscape, reviving the red earth, the beleaguered milk producers of the west country come out into the sunshine like trench warriors after a heavy bombardment.
Despite everything, their spirits are surprisingly good, and a mood of weary resignation is coloured with a resilient determination that can sometimes look like optimism. Perhaps, after all, there is a future.
Weeke Farm, outside Modbury, South Devon, is a classic British beef and dairy producer. Clifford Rogers, his wife Ann, and their two grown-up children, John and Elizabeth (who also works at Ginsters) run the place 24/7, extracting what profit they can from a mixed economy of beef (Aberdeen Angus) and dairy (Holstein-Friesian) cows.
Clifford’s family have farmed in Modbury since the 1920s, for “four generations”, he says with pride. Since the millennium, however, it’s been one damn thing after another, a succession of troubles: foot and mouth in 2000, endemic TB, and now the battle over the price of milk. Ann, who does the paperwork, adds that it’s the ceaseless regulation, much of it related to EU directives, that drives her mad.
It’s 7.30am on a cold April morning, and we are standing at the business end of a massive cowshed. Some 200 milkers are patiently waiting to take their turn at one of four computerised milking machines. Across the yard another barn houses a score of calves, tended by Ann.
She has a quasi-maternal relationship with these newborns. Elsewhere, the cows just have numbers and it’s all about prices and productivity. Every other day 10,000 litres is shipped to one of the big supermarkets, with prices this year, says John, “as high as 34p a litre, and as low as 24p a litre”.
Clifford, like most of Britain’s farmers, is suffering from low food prices, but while dairy prices are down, beef is up, so the ledger balances out. His son adds: “Things are difficult… We work all hours, seven days a week, and the cows are milking 24/7.” His father calls them “milk pumps”, but insists he has never known a happier herd.
In the past, with the coming of summer, these cows would have grazed the Devon fields. Now, as spring unfurls, and the world outside the cosy gloom of the cowshed brightens, the beasts in their pens can hear the sounds of rebirth – the twittering of birds; the bleating of newborn lambs – and perhaps even smell the grass beyond.
But they will never graze in the sun. Their life is indoors, in this giant barn. Ann says, “We are all monitored now,” as she stares at the milking robot, approximately £40,000 worth of hi-tech wizardry. This bright red computerised stall, into which each cow will step for a high-nutrient feed, will milk each animal with a mechanical pump 24/7, and also monitor the health and welfare of each beast, a vital part of modern cow-farming. Around 5% of farms already use the machines.
“Red tape,” says Ann, “makes our life a misery.” Much of her day is spent filling forms and filing animal data. To her way of thinking, perhaps to blame someone, she believes, “This government is against agriculture.” Far removed from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London, the Rogers family feels forgotten. “Farmers don’t count,” says Clifford. “That’s because we are just 2% of the population.”
Some years back, before his son committed himself full-time to the business, Clifford toyed with cutting back, even selling out. Today, despite adverse trading conditions, he has invested a lot of money in the farm so John can carry it forward. It’s not a mega farm, like some up-country, with a large professional staff, and upwards of a thousand cows.
Clifford has no interest in that kind of farming. But he will do what it takes to maximise the return on his herd. But the fundamental problem for the family-run business is that, however much they trim the overheads, and stimulate the daily yield, a cow can only produce so much milk.
Clifford is a realist and a fighter for a way of life facing real and sustained threats, from inside and out. There is not much room for sentiment at Weeke Farm. And yet, despite everything, the rural economy staggers on. Scattered across the Devon hills, there are other farmers who sustain some even more traditional ways to nurture a cow.
Sally and Marcus Vergette farm a smallholding just outside Okehampton, with a herd of about a dozen Aberdeen Angus. Visitors to Coombe Farm step back in time. The Vergettes’ thatched farmhouse dates to the 17th century.
This land is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) and the Vergettes’ grass-fed beef herd is integral to its unique ecology. Even the way the cows tear the grass promotes a richer habitat.
These meadows flourish on “the worst land in Britain”, says Sally, but the wet, slumpy yellow clay is rich in wild flowers (angelica, meadowsweet, wavy St John’s wort, southern marsh orchid, heath spotted-orchid, lesser butterfly-orchid, saw-wort, meadow thistle – special plants that grow on Devon’s culm grassland, and need cattle grazing to survive). This, in turn, becomes a perfect habitat for some very rare butterflies (the marsh fritillary, Euphydryas aurinia; wood whites; and marbled whites).
This might seem like a little corner of paradise, but the Vergettes have known the dark side of cow farming. They acquired Coombe Farm before the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001. Overnight, they found themselves in a war zone. Armed police restricting free movement on the approaches to their property. Neighbouring farmers committing suicide. A rural community in crisis amid a landscape reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch.
“When the fire pits were raging,” Marcus recalls, “there was this unearthly yellow light. On the roads near the furnaces, bits of cow, from exploding carcasses, would fall out of the sky onto passing cars.”
Sally loves her cows. “It’s a much bigger undertaking than sheep or pigs, and much more rewarding. A longer-term relationship,” she says, adding that she doesn’t name the animals that are earmarked for slaughter. “The only part of my cows I won’t eat,” she adds, “is the tongue.” That, she admits, is too intimately connected to her memory of rearing the animal. (Cows will lick their favourite farmers.)
“Otherwise,” she continues, “I sell everything: roasting joints, steak, mince, brisket, ox tail, offal, the lot.” In the constant battle with US agribusiness, beef farmers like the Vergettes can’t compete on price. But they score heavily on qualities such as taste, texture and carveability. For the traditional Devon farmer, UK beef prices are quite healthy just now, and certainly better than dairy.
Unlike the Rogers’ cows, which are numbered not named, Vergette treats her herd the old-fashioned way, like family. “If you treat them with respect, they promote tranquillity. Cows like a quiet life. If they have food, water and security, they are very peaceful.” Comparing her herd with other inhabitants of the farmyard, she says, “Sheep are flighty, and silly. Horses run away. But cows live close to the earth and are dependable.”
Sally talks to her cows as she mucks out the cowshed twice a day. “If I’m in a good mood, I’ll sing to them, or I’ll put on the radio. They get slightly bemused by Test Match Special. There’s no anxiety with cows, and they are fascinating to watch. The hierarchy of a suckler herd is quite complicated. You breed the ones that are best, and eat the others. You want a square straight rump, the parts hit by the sun are the best eating.”
Nature can be very simple. The moment in the cows’ year that Sally savours most keenly is that “happy day” in May when her herd leaves the cowshed for the meadow. “I can only let them out when the ground is hard enough.” Then her cows kick up their heels, run round like mad things, and race for the spring pasture, full of wild flowers and herbs. “They love angelica and thistle heads,” says Sally.
The Vergettes are part of an immemorial way of life that faces extraordinary challenges. Sally worries that it’s the family businesses that are most at risk. “It takes the experience of three generations, grandfather-father-son, to become truly expert,” she says.
Many of her neighbours are under intense financial pressure. Dairy and beef cattle farmers, with ancient family traditions, and livestock pedigrees going back many generations, now average an annual income of approximately £11,000 (not including subsidies), and most are deep in debt.
Across Devon, with west country tourism booming, the temptation is to sell up. At about £8,000 per acre, the land is like gold. Once it passes into private or commercial hands its farming potential is lost. “We are peasant farmers,” says Sally Vergette defiantly. “We just have to hope it’s a way of life that can stay viable.”
About a mile down the road, on Pulworthy Farm, Sarah Cann tends her father’s herd of about 70 Holstein-Friesian dairy cows. She describes herself as “a cow-orientated person” and studies dairy farming at Duchy College in Colliton Barton, outside Exeter. Her father, John, started life as a herdsman and worked his way up to acquire this pocket-handkerchief smallholding.
The Canns are adopting the Rogers family strategy. Compared to the Vergettes, there’s nothing traditional about their dairy business. The Cann family’s cowshed, like Weeke Farm’s, is run by a computerised milking machine.
“I don’t actually milk the cows here,” says Sarah, but she insists that agriculture 24/7 is much more demanding than old-fashioned dairy farming. “The robot never stops. It has its own telephone [linked to Sarah’s mobile] and it will ring you up in the middle of the night to tell you about a problem with one of your cows.”
Sarah, who does “relief-milking” on a nearby farm, believes that, with the robot, she is much more fully aware of the cows’ welfare. “In a conventional [dairy] parlour,” she says, “all you see is the udder. With the robot, it’s a much more pleasurable experience.” This might sound odd, but Sarah is grateful to have time and space to look after the welfare of the whole cow, an animal whose character and individuality she cherishes.
All 70 cows on Pulworthy Farm have a number and a name. Her favourite milkers are Dolly, Wendy and Sparkle, and she knows them like family. “Your cow is a lot cleverer than people think. They’re just like people, with their own personalities. There are nice cows, and aggressive cows; jealous cows, stubborn cows, shy cows, grumpy cows…”
A modern British cow, run by a robot, might have a reason to be grumpy. Fed and watered in the cowshed, with sea-sand to rest on night and day, the Pulworthy cows are comfortable, but have never been out in a field. Sarah Cann’s milkers are kept inside all year. John Cann, her father, chips in. “They broke out one night into a field, but they did not know what grass was, and sniffed it, but showed no interest. In the end, they came back to their shed.”
With the robot, there’s no place for herd behaviour. “Every cow is an individual,” he explains. “It’s up to the cow to decide when to be milked.” Both Canns, father and daughter, insist that their robot promotes the best possible conditions for their herd. This is no-nonsense modern British agriculture, a multi-million pound industry, geared to supermarkets.
Sarah says she is “really only interested in cows. I’m not a sheep girl.” Against the odds, she believes in the future. “I’d like to have my own farm one day. I can’t see myself doing anything else really. Nothing’s handed it to you on a plate. You have to put in the effort to get the results. But it’s a good life.”
