Farmer Focus: Milk price is clearly unsustainable

I should know by now that in farming, every time you think you have things under control something appears to cause extra problems.

Poor weather at the end of July was holding off harvest and pushing all the field work into a tighter and tighter window. It had also held my wife Anna’s “Maize Maze” back, with the quietest opening fortnight we’ve had so far.

On 4 August, we managed to snatch fourth cut. It yielded similarly to third and seemed to clamp well. We haven’t applied any fertiliser to grow fifth cut, just slurry, so it will be interesting to see what the yield is.

See also: High input costs risk the future of dairy farming, warns charity

About the author

Tom Stable

Tom Stable and family, Ulverston, Cumbria, milk 300 Holsteins twice a day, producing milk for Arla and ice cream for their Cumbrian Cow brand. The 215ha operation, of which half is rented, grows grass, maize, and winter wheat. Cows average 10,800 litres.

Read more articles by Tom Stable

With the weather finally improving, we began combining on 8 August and visitors to the maze rocketed. However, the next day, Anna slipped a disc in her back and was hospitalised for four days.

Instead of organising harvest, I had to introduce myself to the 20 members of staff Anna has at the maze and get to grips with how she runs things there so I could troubleshoot for them and keep things going.

Full credit goes to a tremendous bunch of family and staff who stepped up and did what was needed, completing harvest, caring for the cows, looking after the children, and keeping the maze running.

You don’t realise how important someone is until they are missing. Anna is at home and slowly recovering, fingers crossed.

Yields of straw and grain were back this year. Winter wheat averaged 9.26t/ha (3.75t/acre). We’ve seen much more grass among the stubble than normal, which is something we will look at.

The straw was baled into all shapes and sizes as contractor availability and weather allowed.

The building is progressing well, with the passages concreted this week. By the time I write again, we should have cows in one half of it.

Grass quality has deteriorated now, and the 70 remaining grazing cows are averaging just 16 litres, while the housed cows are averaging 45.

I don’t need to tell you the milk price is clearly unsustainable. The number of herd sales happening tells you that.

The most worrying thing is the lack of any positive sentiment, regardless of how hard you look. As it stands, 2024 looks worse than 2023, and 2023 has hardly been a classic.