A dairy farmer is fighting falling milk prices – by doing it all himself taking the milk direct from cows to customers.
Small independent farmer Neil Briggs, of Samuel Briggs and Sons at Pole Moor, has revealed how his family business is managing to stay afloat amid the current crisis that is threatening other farmers’ livelihoods.
Neil, 56, says that producing and then bottling and the milk from the farm’s 100 free range cows and selling locally has helped it stay afloat throughout crises that have rocked the industry since 1920.
The Far Worts Hill Farm, which is run by Neil and his wife Jacqui, has even continued to break even this summer when most dairy farmers across the UK are receiving less money from buyers than they produce the milk for.
He said: “There used to be up to seven farms within two miles of us but the last one gave up five years ago. It’s a very hard industry and farmers who sell to big retailers aren’t even receiving what it costs to produce it.
“But we decided to do something a bit different to keep the business viable by bottling our milk on site and then delivering it.
“Our farm started in Nelson, Lancashire, by my grandfather Samuel who started doing a milk round in 1920.
“He would take a 10 gallon jug on a horse and cart around the local area twice a day and women would come collect it in jugs.
“Then they started bottling on site in the 1940s and continued to do it when the farm moved here in the 1970s.
“Now we sell it to independent milkmen, have our own milk round in Brighouse and supply Bolster Moor Farm Shop and are managing to break even.
“It does mean having to do two jobs instead of one, but it has been paying off.
“We’re not making a profit but we’re staying viable as it costs us around 33 to 34p per pint to produce.”
Neil said that having a small farm had also helped them.
This is despite the struggles faced by other comparatively small farms who choose to sell to big retailers.
“Supermarkets would never look at us because we only had 100 cows which produce 600,000 litres of milk a year, not the minimum of one million”, he said.
“But by selling to local businesses it means that we are not reliant on one buyer.
“There aren’t many milkmen left but we have customers who like getting locally-produced and fresh products and we manage to sell all the milk and cream we produce which means there’s no waste.”
Neil is hopeful for the future despite the current situation, .
“We just have to hope that the situation gets better,” he added. “Demand for milk may be down now but we have a growing population so we hope it gets bigger again.
“All our business has been done through word of mouth and we’re now setting up a website while we hope that my son, Sam, who is learning farm skills in New Zealand will return home with some fresh ideas and take over the farm.
“And my other children have also been involved in the farm with Sara doing it while she was at university, Gemma helping on the Brighouse milk round and Hannah still being in charge of the delivery and retail side of the business.”
