subject: developments in the dairy industry : dairy husbandry

A General Meeting of the Society was held on 10th February, 1971, in the Edward Lewis Lecture Hall, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, W1

The President, Mr. P. A. Hoare, was in the Chair

MORNING SESSION

BY R. P. FRANCIS

Chairman, Milk and Dairy Produce Committee, National Farmers’ Union

It is, I suppose, presumptious for a layman to come here and talk to all the experts in this audience. I have tried to prepare a paper which will take my visit to Australia last autumn into account. The title ‘Dairy Husbandry’ meant that I had to consider dairy husbandry in its national and its international development, and whilst the latter is of some importance to us, I felt that you would wish me to try to apply the lessons learnt in Australia to the national development. My approach to this may not be a conventional one as you would expect, but one influenced by the job I have been doing for the last four years, that is before one can consider developments within the dairy industry, one has to consider the political climate that is going to make these developments necessary or possible. Indeed if one goes back to Australia and the plea that was made at the last session of the Congress by the Indian delegates (who will be welcoming the Congress to Delhi in 1974), one is made clearly aware that dairy husbandry developments will depend to a great extent on the world’s social conscience as to whether its food industry will be allowed to develop on a selfish national basis, or whether it will take the international approach of making food available for the world’s masses. Consciences have been pretty good in the last twenty years when it has not meant too much paying, but we are rapidly approaching the stage when the nations who have been paying for the world‘s conscience, and I refer here particularly to the United States, UK and one or two European countries, are beginning to find the price too high.

If we return to the domestic scene, our own development will be tremendously affected by entry into the European Economic Community, because if we do so I am convinced that we shall gradually change our seasonal normal all-the-year-round

pattern of production to one of summer emphasis, whether we like it or not.

In the dairy industry within the last ten years we have had throughout the world a tremendous squeeze on producer profits, and this was noticeable in Australia even more than in New Zealand. As far as the dairy industry goes, the squeeze has probably been beneficial because it has ensured that milk producers throughout the world have had to take advantage of every advance and device to improve the technical efficiency of equipment. The dairy industry has stood up well to the pressures of the last ten years, but in considering the develop ment we are now contemplating, I wonder whether in fact the industry will suddenly dig its heels in and say, ‘We have been squeezed to this much efficiency: we have been pushed to work so much harder, are we willing to go on doing it?’ After the rapid changes which have occurred during the last ten years, it will be a very bold man who will dare to forecaat what will happen if we eventually join the EEC.

I am convinced that we shall only develop internationally and nationally in response to public demand for the products. We have had a period of free production throughout the world. There have been very few artificial restraints placed on it. In this country obviously we have a very good case for shelving artificial restraints until the farmer is producing 100 per cent of home demand. Inter- nationally, I think we may apply what can well be termed international supply management, but I hope we will not. Having been to Tasmania and seen the first effects of a rather arbitrary 34 per cent cut in the milk allocation which farmers can send to their local factories, one sees good cows and calves often put down because there is no alternative way of using their production. One sees the frustration

Journal of the Sociefy of Dairy Technology, Vol. 24, Nos. 2 & 3, April-July, 1971 67

of the farmer because he cannot expand his herd, and the frustration of the man who is clearing new land and is refused permission to produce milk at all where, in that climate, milk is the only product which he could profitably take from the land for at least a few years while he is establishing the soil structure.

I do not subscribe to the view, put forward in many areas, that we shall gradually replace milk and milk products by substitutes. There is much muddled thinking about the word ‘substitute’. There are two substitutes: the true artificial product where the cow is not used as the base producer, and the product made by using a very cheap skim milk base, available at artificially low prices. The latter is not a true substitute, as it still depends on the cow. In the next five years I believe the world is going to wake up and pay a far more realistic price for the SNF portion of milk which has been given away at such ridiculously low prices for the last few years. The industry is moving into an era when we may well find that milk will be broken down into its con- stituent parts and rebuilt, but before we arrive at that stage the problem of low realization for milk powder, etc. must be overcome. The public must learn that if it wants food, it must pay the proper price for it.

You will say that I have digressed from the theme of dairy husbandry, but I believe we must establish a political base and then look at the necessary inputs which will be required in the next decade so that the industry can develop. I feel these can be summarized in the following order.

Firstly, a profitable demand for the product, and by that I mean the public must want what they are buying and be willing to pay the proper price for it.

The second thing, about which there may be some disagreement but which I believe is going to become increasingly important, is that the necessary labour force should be available in whatever country production is taking place. On the production side insufficient regard has been paid to the resistance that is building up here, and in New Zealand in particular, to working seven days a week for no extra pay on the two days when the public is enjoying leisure. I believe that there has to be a real ‘rethink’ on how we can attract the necessary labour force into the dairy husbandry side of the industry.

The third essential is that capital should be made available to continue the modernization which has been going on during the past ten years due to the work of the dairy technologists. This may sound like a plea for charity, but if the government expects the industry to develop (and it is government which contfols the prices in the industry), it must make enough money available every year for re-investment, and thissimply hasnot been therein the last two years.

On the political front we must establish a correct balance between milk and other agricultural and horticultural products to ensure that milk pro-

duction continues at the level needed. For instance, I believe that if we went straight in to the EEC now the balance of production in this country might be seriously disturbed. There is an obvious attraction at EEC prices for farmers to produce grain crops and possibly beef with much less physical effort than is now being put into milk production. We have to make sure that whatever structure develops, whether inside or outside the EEC, there is a correct balance between milk producers and producers of other commodities.

My fifth point on the necessary inputs is that there has to be a greater understanding between the dairy industry and the beef industry. There must be integration and the Milk Marketing Board ought to be looking at a Meat Marketing Board. The government has told us not to go outside the area of Milk Marketing, but I believe there should be much more real cooperation, and that while we are producing milk, we should also produce the right raw material for the beef industry. Having examined the profitability of some enterprises during the past few years, I might add that half the profitability of milk production on most dairy farms stems from the value of the calf.

Lastly, on the input side 1 believe we must have a real change of heart on the international scene. This was discussed in Sydney in one of the small groups on which I served. There was agreement that there must be an end to the artificiality of export subsidization. Sometime in the next few years we must get down to realistic prices for milk products. Of all the products in the world today, milk is the worst one for which to obtain a quotation of true international price. The vast majority of people will say, ‘Well, take the New Zealand price which is not subsidized and that is the true international price’. If you tried to expand New Zealand production because it is so much cheaper demand would exceed supplies and of course you would be short and New Zealand would be able to rise to our price. I believe this artificiality must be ended.

From there 1 think we should move on to thinking of the future structure of the dairy farm. You all know the changes we have had in the last ten years, but as I see it we shall have an acceleration in the gradual increase in herd size as compared with the last ten years. In this country it has risen in ten years by about 12 cows. In New Zealand the average has gone up in a 15-year period by almost 40 cows - from 50 to over 90, and I believe this kind of development may well come in the UK. The reason is that we are moving out of an era which was bounded by the size of one’s buildings. For generations we have kept cows in fixed cow sheds, but we have now broken the tie of restricted housing, which means that we can expand beyond the capacity of the cow sheds. In the past this could not be done without tremendous capital expenditure. We are now moving into an era of loose

68 Journal of the Society of Dairy Technology, Vol. 24, Nos. 2 & 3, April-July, 1971

housing and parlour systems, which are elastic and can be made even more elastic with very little additional expense. I believe that in the development of dairy husbandry the cowshed system is doomed, even where you have pipeline milking. Because of its high capital cost it will disappear. As parlour and loose housing accommodation is increased there will be a tendency to develop the farm to the size that one man can handle, or one- man units. I believe that as regards the actual production on the farm the unit we shall eventually arrive at per man will be somewhere between 70 and 90 cows. I am not happy that men are handling numbers far in excess of this, as one of two things happens. They must either obtain additional resources behind the scene, which are expensive - in other words, other men feeding the cows and doing other jobs - or else there is a development which I believe is regrettable. I went to see a farm in Surrey recently, where they had stepped up from 75 cows to 120 with one man. Across the yard was two inches of wet slurry, and on asking how often it was cleaned up I was told once every three days. We noticed that some of the cows had foot trouble. On asking about production, we were told that they had dropped by 100 gallons per cow after expansion. I believe that if we attempt to go beyond this level of 70/90 cows per man, the industry will be the poorer and our final net returns will not show any more profit, unless there is a big break-through in milking machine design on the actual ability to remove teat cups mechanically.

Even in Australia and New Zealand we saw plenty of herds that were being milked by one man and here most producers agree that even though there are good grazing conditions all the year round, very little feeding and no winter housing, when you go beyond 90 cows/man with present equipment you are risking a breakdown in efficiency. I believe that it would be to our discredit that we should try to produce milk in conditions created by high numbers.

In the dairy industry we may well arrive at the stage where cows are milked and looked after under contract, a practice which has already been estab- lished in this country. In New Zealand I was very interested in their share system, where the owner provides the land and the cows, and on a Sol50 basis the man milks them and takes half the profit. This goes back, of course, very near to renting a dairy in this country pre-1914.

Having decided to keep the cows in loose housing and milk them in a parlour instead of in the tradi- tional way, we must take a look at parlour development. As I see it, we probably have five parlours to choose from at the moment: raised abreast parlour, tandem, herringbone, shute, or the latest status symbol, the rotary parlour. I think they will all continue to be used in varying degrees according to individual circumstances; but 1 have no doubt that the one which is most efficient and will have the

most support is the herringbone. I have seen most of them in use here and was interested in New Zealand to see the new type of rotary parlour that they were using in Ruakura. They admitted that it took them over a fortnight to persuade the cows to go into it, which I thought must be a great dis- advantage, and I believe that the herringbone will win and that this present tendency towards the use of rotary parlours will die out as it is a passing snob symbol. I might revise my opinion when I know how far dairy technologists have gone with auto- matic removal of teat cups, because if this problem is overcome I would say that there is a future for the rotary parlour. Its cost at the moment is over 50 per cent above that of the herringbone.

On cleaning systems, of course, we will be pro- vided with more efficient methods, but it does appear that the acidified boiling water method will be successful, and may well become standard practice. At the same time, I believe that we shall continue with bulk development. The Milk Market- ing Board here has a big responsibility, but if they proceed at the present rate they may in fact acceler- ate the drift to larger herds, for cost collection of churns will be so prohibitive that a man may be forced out of business, although in other respects he may be a perfectly efficient producer.

I shall be very interested to know how Mr. Morrey thinks the collection of milk will go, and how the Board will view this very vexed question of payment on tank collection. I do not know whether you realize that as you increase the number of bulk tanks you automatically give a disincentive to the churn producers, because the cost of collection must be high.

Having reviewed the mechanical aspect of the job, I think we have now to look at dairy husbandry and how to feed the herd. It is difficult to make an accurate forecast, but undoubtedly entry into EEC will influence this problem. If we go into EEC we shall be forced, unless there is a great price benefit to be gained from retention of our liquid market, into a more summer type of production, and this will necessitate the greater use of grass and less imported feedstuffs. With self-sufficiency we have been making slow but steady progress in production methods, more palatable grasses, more efficient grasses, and furthermore I think it would be interesting to see just how far we have spread the grazing season in the last ten years. My own recol- lection is that on average ten years ago many farms in this country would have been hard put to it to provide five months grazing and seven months forage crops. Now it is the general pattern to have something like seven months grazing and five months crops, and I believe the time may well come when we could arrive at nine months grazing and three months imported feed. Self-feed silage will stay, there is no doubt about that, but the only development which I think is interesting and have seen

Journal of the Society of Dairy Technology, Yo!. 24, Nos. 2 & 3, April-July, 1971 69

here and abroad (it was referred to in Australia by many people) is hay drying. The processes we have at the moment are somewhat cumbersome and expensive, but if we surmount these difficulties -whether this can be done in a machine I do not know - I believe that this will become one of the greatest advances in feeding techniques during the next few years. We may well be expected to provide up to 2 gallons per day and maintenance from the product which we would get in this way. The experts in silage will agree that there is some gamble even in silage making in the wet season. Properly done hay-drying is a foolproof method.

Now we must look at the problem of where we are going to produce our milk in the next few years, and the answer is very short: we shall continue the pattern of post-war years, and that is away from the east of the UK over to the west. We shall become specialist milk producers in the west of England. I can see every logical reason why this trend should continue and in fact the increase in production in the west is something like 24 per cent in the last four years, which is a true indication of the feeling of the country. One may say that it is stupid to produce milk in the west and not in the east where a lot of it is consumed, but the production conditions are so much better in the west with its higher rainfall, and the relative cost of moving it in a tank 50 miles is so small that I believe this to be a logical and proper development.

Regarding the cattle we shall be using to produce milk, which I know is a sensitive subject, figures published by the Milk Marketing Board recently show that there has been a further advance from 68 to 75 per cent of Friesians in the national herd, mostly at the expense of the Ayrshire breed. This is an indication we have found that Friesian cattle are the most efficient milk producers obtainable. Fortunately, from the industry’s point of view, it is also an extremely useful animal for the production of beef. If government policy continues to indicate that we should produce beef calves, there is no doubt about it that we shall be using Friesian cows. We shall have some very interesting experiments in the dairy industry in the next few years to find out which of the breeds now imported from across the Channel, the Charrolais and the Simmenthal, or our Hereford, is the animal best suited to produce the finest beef calves. I also wonder whether in fact we may come back to the pure Friesians as possibly being a suitable animal for both jobs.

I think we all have lessons to learn from the experimental work which the Milk Marketing Board is doing on the beefing qualities of various bulls. I only wish they were extending their experiments to cover more breeds.

Of course, we shall continue to use the minority breeds of Channel Islands, Ayrshire and South Devon for the production of special high fat milks, but I believe that if we demand a premium for high

fat milk, we may well follow the pattern of the American market and find that as the price rises, there will be resistance to buying it. Demand is static or even declining for this type of production.

When looking at dairy husbandry, I believe the continued retention of the Milk Marketing Board will be a major factor in the development of dairy husbandry. Due to their fortunate position in con- trolling the finances of the industry, they have assumed the control of a large part of the breeding herds through artificial insemination centres; they also make technical progress known, and milk producers who are engaged in dairy husbandry every day have come to rely on them for a background service. This service is under some threat if we go into Europe and I believe the industry may well suffer a setback and be very much retarded in development if in fact we lose the Board’s services due to political implications and shrinking influence. I sincerely believe this is what could happen and we shall have to bear this in mind. I hope governments will be zealous to see that in any agreements they may make in Europe we can preserve the Milk Marketing Board as a first buyer of all milk in the country. I know this is political, but I am afraid that when you discuss dairy husbandry today you have to take the political repercussions into account.

Development in dairy husbandry will now depend on the willingness of governments, not only in this country but in others, to see that the farmer receives an adequate return for doing one of the most important jobs in the world, that is to provide the world’s expanding population with protein. We all know that in the western world immediately you get a rise in the standard of living, people buy protein in the form of meat, but we have vast areas of Asia and Africa which are insufficiently supplied with protein. From the plea we had at the last session at the Australian Congress to send some of this protein into India, we know that there is a job to be done. There are also signs that the boom production years are at an end; the large stock of butter in Europe has all gone, Australia has a slight surplus at the moment, but New Zealand is absolutely scraping the barrel to find enough milk products to satisfy her contractural commitments. It will be a tragedy for the dairy industry which has done so much for the health of this and other nations if, through political mismanagement, we are not allowed to develop as we should during the next ten years.

I have deliberately omitted reference to one aspect which is probably one of the most important, and that is the development of the cotel. We have seen them start in this country, we have seen them in Europe. They are massive units, sometimes sponsored by vertical integration. The feedstuffs required cost a lot of money, and other people try to get in on the ‘band waggon’. We have seen it happen in poultry, we are seeing it happen with pigs at the moment, and it may well be that there will be


a similar attack on the dairy industry. It is interesting to note that internationally in Australia, almost every delegate said that this method was not successful in his own country. With nearly 2,000 cows in Cologne they were running into real trouble, as they were obliged to bring fodder from up to 19 miles away. The disposal of slurry is all right for a year or two, but now it has become a tremendous problem. We understand that in one year’s operation the Aston Clinton cote1 had a herd yield of less than 500 gal/cow. This type of development is not very popular with the dairy industry, partly due, I am sure, to the lack of expertise. We must in fact train management to run these cotels properly, and there is a real opportunity for very specialist development. But my own belief is that we shall return to a herd which is made up of units of something like 70 to 90 cows or multiples of them, which will be controlled by one man. I believe under this set-up there may well be a real future for those people who are willing to undertake the work for seven days/ week, but I see gradual resistance to this seven- day week working as one of the inhibiting factors in the development of the industry in the next decade.

The industry has deserved well of this country for the nutritional benefits we have given it during the last 60-70 years. I only hope that the country is willing to pay this debt. If one thinks of the semi- starvation that existed in the early 30s, which was largely overcome by the free issue of milk in schools and other organizations, I believe that to throw the industry aside now in favour of imports or other forms of food is a very short-sighted national policy.

DISCUSSION Mr. J. S. Money: Any success in my own farming has been from harnessing technology and very largely from resisting a great deal of inappropriate technology.

I would disagree with Mr. Francis in his suggestion that there has been a great deal of technological advance in the last decade. I feel that there has been very little new on the husbandry side, but a great deal of polishing up of technology which has been in the air but not taken up for a very long time.

I was most intrigued by Mr. Francis’s list of what he calls ‘input’ requirements for the dairy industry and his suggestion that quite a lot of these depend on politicians smiling on us. I certainly do not underrate the value of having politicians on our side, but 40 years of dairy farming have taught me that there are three possibilities for remaining solvent. One is the faint hope of government doing something realistic on a long enough basis for one to make use of it. The weather has done more for us in the last twelve months than the government, and in all seriousness, if in the spring of 1971 the weather continues smiling on us there will be more farmers remaining in business for another year for that reason than by reason of anything the government has done to aid farming.

I have always been ready to back technology by my own ability to work out my own destiny within my own boun- daries, and I have put more faith in that than in the government or even the weather.

A profitable demand for the product is the first require- ment of Mr. Francis, and as a marketing and production man, this to me is in some respect a rule in our market. I am

convinced that in this country, once dairy farming is put on a sound basis (and there I agree with Mr. Francis), this would really mean a move to the west and a move to the grass areas and coming back to grass simplification of cropping; but when you apply this to the milk industry I think we have a duty to employ the profitability of milk production to cushion farmers on well nigh impossible or very unattractive land. The argument has been used that such-and-such a farm is only fit for milk production, and has no hope of profits in any other kind of farming. This is a great compliment to the Milk Marketing Board. but I think it has been a very dangerous policy to pursue. It was followed by an attempt to restrict the milk industry in this country to the requirements of the liquid market in the hope of propping up our price for the commodity. This in turn now looks regrettably foolish. We cannot have a successful or healthy growing milk industry in this country without a healthy and expanding milk products market hand in hand with our other food markets. It comes to the point that milk is essentially a crop of the land, and here again we have been led into a trap largely by vested interests in that we have relied far too much on a combination of second grade land and the feeding of our cows for reasonable production by imported food or from arable areas in other parts of the country. It is just about time we woke up in dairy farming, first to the implications of high land values, which are here to stay, and mean that we have to produce crops that yield intensive food nutrients per acre, such as forage crops, which spelt out in farming terms is grass. Then, if you superimpose on this the vicious increase in costs brought about by transport (I think if you ask any farmer today what is his most frightening cost he would say without hesitation that it was transport) and this is not to neglect labour and land prices. Furthermore to multiply transport costs by bringing in unnecessary feedingstuffs on to the farm is obviously going to lead to a high cost industry. I would say without hesitation that it has never been truer than it is this morning that the dairy farmer who is going to stay in business in this country will be the one who arranges to d o with as little as possible the whole time. Once this is done, we can compete on fair terms with any country in the world, and I say that after having come back from a world tour and seen what our competitors are doing.

The necessary labour force to be available was point two, and this, of course, is no more than a question of financial reward, and proper management. We still have, I think, a very happy labour force in farming, perhaps happier than many industries at present.

Regarding point three, the capital needs of the industry, I would agree here that if we get continuing encouragement for investment as we have had in recent years, hand in hand with a boom in our market, we can take care of our capital requirements. But in the last decade a great deal of capital has been frittered away in chasing technology which never had a hope of any application in dairy farming, and here I do not wish to cross swords with academics, who work so much on their own particular problem in isolation that they must be convinced it is worth-while. Perhaps we, as farmers, are at fault in not applying their technology soon enough, for they then try to make operating plans for us as farmers, which just will not hold water. I am afraid some of them have been on farming platforms around the country, leading to quite a lot of hopeless deployment of capital expenditure which is regrettable. I think the sooner we make sure that the professionals who invent farming systems are obviously farmers, the sooner we shall perhaps get technology which is of use to us on the husbandry side, and safe enou constructive way. We should also avoid a great Pa eal of disappointment which leads in some farming minds to a lack of faith in new technology.

Mr. Francis talked about a balance between milk and other agricultural and horticultural products, and there never has been a time in history when farmers have been more conscious of the penalty for cross cropping or over-cropping; or

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of the need to dispense as far as possible with transport and processing costs by producing forage crops on the farm and feeding them back, taking the cow to the crop and not the crop to the cow. Some people think this is a sort of ‘Family Bible’ of mine, but however true it has been over the years, it is truer now than ever before, and will be the governing factor in survival or at least in expansion of a healthy dairy industry in thiscountry. If we can get that point home, our dairy industry can stand fair competition from anywhere in the world.

When it comes to comparing the potential of the grassland of Australia and New Zealand with that of this country, I would say that the limit of production in Australia, as distinct from New Zealand. is the limit of their water supply. Dairy farming there is governed by their ability to irrigate and water resources. New Zealand is much more sophisticated in its grass farming than Australia. Our great handicap is that we have a winter to prepare for, which the Australian and New Zealand farmer does not. Tremendous effort here goes into conserving crops for feeding back in the winter. A point we can make more use of in our own farming is the revolutionary control we have through the advent of the forage harvester with which, to my mind, we can make higher grazing quality grass for our cows over our shorter grazing season. 1 think there is about a 60:40 proportionate division of the year in grazing opportunities and feeding back conserved crops. The fact that we have to carry this burden of conservation does present an opportunity, and if we use it for improving our grazing combined with the fact that we are so near to our market compared with our New Zealand competitors, 1 think wecan at all times holdour own on fair terms.

I was hoping to avoid the question of milking parlours, because it is a very vexed one. I would not dismiss the rotary parlour, but I must confess to a leaning to the flexibility of the herringbone parlour. There are continual improvements in the handling of milking techniques, and much has been done for circulation cleaning and the development of chemi- cals for the job. To me it is disappointing when anyone talks of the appropriate number of cows/man: I can think of farms where 50 cows are being appallingly mishandled, and I can take you to farms where 150 cows are being well handled by one man. It all depends on the way one’s stalling is laid out for the purpose, and there will be inevitably an ever increasing number of cows per man. I think it is wrong to be too rigid in our approach to this problem.

I agree with Mr. Francis who, while not killing the cotel, has obviously a dislike for it. The cotel has been brought to this country from America. but there is no comparison between the farming conditions, and attached to it is the opprobrium due to what has happen+ in the pig and poultry industries. The reasons Mr. Francis has put forward for his dislike are trivial compared with the fundamental one, which should have dismissed it before anyone ever went through the exercise, i.e. the difference between pigs and poultry and ruminant animals. Ruminant animals are most competitive where they are grazing most efficiently, and as Mr. Francis pointed out, you can only get within reach of food for grazing by having them in smaller units; when you get above a certain size every cow is an enemy of the next and this is a potent point, for food is everything in the economics of dairy farming. The cotel was out of court before anyone wasted more time on questions of labour and management. It could not possib!y succeed because it does not provide the appropriate conditions for a cow to be able to graze successfully.

On the question of milk substitutes, are we talking about skim powder and such things, or about the elimination of the cow? The elimination of the cow does not frighten me one little bit; I have had a lifetime of being tied pretty tightly to her tail and dairy farming would be a wonderful operation once I got rid of her and was able to farm my grass on a five day a week basis and deliver it to a factory to turn into milk.

The integration of milk and beef is important. There have been many references to the fact that beef is an extravagant

commodity because of the inefficient food conversion by the ruminant, compared with that of pigs and poultry. Again, of course, we come back to technology in isolation, and it is true that in practice the possibility of reducing the unit cost of food for ruminants is sogreat that it brings these two back into much nearer competition. It is to be supposed that in future, beef will be produced on the same lines as our own milk; from intensive high quality grass by animals kept on it for the whole of their much shorter lives, but this does not necessitate high inputs ofconcentrates. It can be done from very modest inputs of concentrates with very high quality grass. The Board has any breed of bull with which a man might wish to mate his dairy cows, from a dairy bull to any of the beef bulls, and we hope in time to give an expectance performance from our Warren Farm experiments and increase the number of breeds kept. But it is a very difficult high cost job and not one that can be rushed through. We have at least made a start and we now have some bulls with a very accurate expectance of live weight gain. Mrs. 0. C. Stewart: Mr. Francis mentioned various parlours that are in being in this country and in Australia and New Zealand. Would Mr. Francis tell us something of the techniques which are used in the very large herringbone parlours for twenty or more cows? Mr. R. P. Francis: The largest unit I saw in use was an 18-a- side parlour in New Zealand with two operators who worked very hard; but the most interesting one I saw which might have some application to us was that belonging to a Chairman who would correspond to a County Chairman of the NFU over here, who was milking 120 Jerseys on 90 acres. I went to his farm where he and his wife were milking in the morning in a 12-a-side herringbone, and the two of them milked very efficiently in an hour and 20 minutes obtaining over 200 gallons from these Jerseys, which was a fairly high herd average. I think that as we develop our units, it may well be that big herringbones are the most suitable, which will mean doubling up the men in multiples. Mr. Morrey said that we must not stick our necks out and say how many we can cope with. I still stick my neck out and say that the multiples will be somewhere between 70 and 90 cows.

When I asked the same farmer at 5 pm to dine with me later but expressed doubts as to how the milking would be done as he had no labour on the farm, he replied, ‘Oh, my boy is 15 and will be home from school just after five. He will do the cows’, and he was perfectly prepared for a 15-year- old boy to tackle this parlour on his own. I think possibly we have a little to learn about techniques with a herringbone parlour. Possibly we have imagined that a man cannot walk far enough up the parlour, but this layout was very good and the fact that they are not obliged to have it completely enclosed as we do because their weather is that much kinder, gives them an advantage. We must have an enclosed building that can be made reasonably warm in the winter. That particular installation was the most efficient I saw. I saw another with 18-a-side but the two men there were not working particularly efficiently. Miss K. D. Maddever: Mr. Francis spoke of the difficulty in getting the right men to run our dairy units. Has he any special ideas about the way in which these men should be trained? Mr. R. P. Francis: We must arrange our dairy farming so that a man has reasonable time off. We must make the facilities available for him to live a life comparable to the man working in industry, and I think as far as the dairy industry goes, this either means a development of relief milking among a group of farms so that in fact there is a spare milker, or as is happening in many cases, the owner himself has to be the relief milker.

I believe we have left too much to chance in the past on the training side, and that many of our men have had insufficient technical training. 1 hope the Training Board can put this right. They may, but some degree of blame is


also attached to us in that we have never been willing or anxious to make sure the men we employ have a sufficient background knowledge of the industry. It is not just enough to know how to put teat cups on and take them off and whether the cow is healthy or not. The man must be familiar with the product he is producing, what it is going to be used for and why he is doing that job, but we have made no attempt to get this over to him. It is our own fault that this situation has arisen. I believe we must be very much more conscious of the man as an individual and we must also have the ability, not only to pay him a wage comparable with that of industry but, because of the extreme discomfort in which he performs his job, a wage above that in industry. However much you say that it is a pleasant life - it is for six or seven months of the year - I often think it would be very sobering for the executives and technicians in the milk industry for one week a year, preferably in mid-December or mid-January, to do the work of the man in the field who is actually performing the tasks which they are trying to make easy for him, or make him do two jobs for the one he used to do, because at the end of that time they would have a very different view. Mr. S. W. Lawrance: Does Mr. Francis think the proposed withdrawal of various MAFF services will be detrimental to the growth of milk production, particularly amongst the smaller producers? Mr. R. P. Francis: It may have some minimal effect, but many of the functions performed by the Ministry were being duplicated. The feed firms were providing them and up to a certain point so was the Milk Marketing Board. The industry was paying for all three, because never let it be thought that the Ministry of Agriculture was giving this service absolutely free. Every year at the Price Review on the Ministry state- ment of accounts there was a mention of the services that were given us. At the same time, our feed costs reflected advisory services which are being given by many of the big manufacturers of feedingstuffs. and the Milk Marketing Board have been providing an excellent technical service, but the money has been taken out of producers’ purses. Now, as I see it, the Ministry’s function is going to be performed on a limited scale. However I believe the advisory services may put on a service for which the farmer will pay for what is done for him, and I think this is right. But we must ensure that he has the ability to pay. Dr. R. Scott: I was very interested and pleased to hear Mr. Morrey’s comments, except for his last remarks, that he wants to get rid of the cows. I understand his motives, but if you graph the quality of protein against income or technological advance, or health or any of these things, and put down on this graph the countries which are at the top, you will find that they are all consuming a great deal of milk protein. A typical illustration of this is that Japan has gone all out to increase the amount of milk protein. Now the cow is the cheapest converter of protein into a high quality product and I think we shall see the cow for very many years, because it is not the food of the cow that we are interested in, it is the food of the human, for it is the human who will eventually get this protein from the milk of the cow. Mr. J. S. Morrey: I am the first to admit that I am being taken out of my depth, but there is a point here that is worrying me a little, for I actually said that I would not cry if the cow had to disappear - and there is a difference.

Are you referring to the conversion of urea by the cow into human protein, or are you talking of grass? I cannot listen to the protagonists of urea as far as it affects the situation in this country, because for ruminants there is no protein problem if you are feeding them on the lowest cost food, grass. A higher protein content of the food and supple- mentary protein is a sheer waste of money in dairy farming.

If you are going to tell me that the protein from direct conversion of grass to milk and to the human is of lower value by puttingTgrass through the cow to the human being

I must take note, and it can be a reason for keeping the cow in being. This to me is intensely interesting, but I do not know whether you refer to urea or to grass, and if you are going to tell me that there is a difference in the value to the human of protein from these two sources and whether the cow still fits into the picture on converting grass protein. Dr. R. Scott: The order of conversion is first of all the cow - this is for grass or any food you give it, and then I think the chicken and then the pig and finally beef. So that if you are wanting the best production of human food of the highest quality then you use the cow - the milking cow - and beef comes about seventh or eighth along the line.

There is a very great difference between vegetable protein and animal protein, and the human requires animal protein. It is the most economical way of getting it for human con- sumption. This is my point: that we must keep up a high quality human protein throughout the world, and it seems to me that at this time we are still very dependent upon the cow for a great deal of this high quality protein we need. Mr. H. Burton: Would Mr. Morrey care to list some of the technological failures to which he referred? Mr. J. S. Morrey: The kind of things I refer to are the continual attempts, for instance, to resurrect the maize crop for feeding ruminants in the form of silage in this country. This just is not on. If you take cows back to the east, it could be their hope of survival, but who wants to take cows back to the east when western counties are only half exploited. Give me an economy that will keep the eastern counties’ men in milk production and if I can get it in the west, I will have nothing to worry about. Yet we keep getting this hammering by people who just are not alive to what is possible from grass, or they have not looked at the ceiling of what is possible from maize. That is just one point.

Then there is the question of the cotel. This was never on for me as a farming operation. One only had to get one’s pencil out to see that once they go into 1,OOO cow units, there was no hope at all of capitalizing the terrific advantage of raising grass for cows because you cannot get the cows within reach of grazing grass. There was nothing on the reward side or any possibility of overtaking this tremendous handicap of denying oneself the opportunity to capitalize low cost grazing grass.

At the time of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Cheshire, it looked as though we were going to have a great number of these things put in by poor farmers who were relying on the advocates of cotels in the sinking of their capital. This is the kind of thing I refer to.

There are also plans for grazing and conservation being put forward, some by professors of our universities. Rigid plans are unworkable for something which is essentially unpredict- able, rigid grazing and rigid conservation plans, for instance, to cope with a gross crop of grass which can never be precisely estimated, whereas if you integrate conservation with grazing, you have wonderful flexibility which can follow right through the season and harness every blade at its maximum potential. It is unpardonable for a university professor to make such plans, and it is not only university professors for Mr. Francis referred to the advice given by commercial firms.

I hope I am not giving the impression that 1 am throwing technology out of the window. 1 simply survive, I hope, by being able to identify that which has helped me so tremendously and that which has no future in it. Mr. J. Gibbons: May I again raise the question of the size of units. Mr. Francis referred to the elasticity of modern systems which is possible with the type of housing now available.

Mr. Morrey made passing reference to people farming second-class land and relying largely on imported foodstuff. There are, of course, a lot of people farming second-class land -we cannot all farm in Wiltshire.

How do the speakers see future development in these fields? What does the occupier of second-class land do?

Journal of the Society of Dairy Technology, Vol. 24, Nos. 2 & 3, April-July, 1971 73

What are their prospects of future development in the industry?

Mr* R* p. I do not want to be drawn on this one, as I was last year, when I gave a paper on a somewhat similar subject connected with marginal land. I very imprudently said that the man who was hoping to get a living by keeping cows on 50 acres of marginal land was hoping for the impossible. My subsequent post bag showed an immediate reaction. The answer, in my opinion, is in Mr. Morrey’s remarks on the high cost of land, and that eventually its cost must reflect its ability to produce food, not necessarily tied to the dairy cow or any other crop. If a man is on this second class land which will not keep as many cattle as lush irrigated pastures in Horton in Wiltshirewhich Mr. Morrey knows about, it ought to be reflected in the capital cost paid for it. I think this is probably where we have gone wrong; that the pressure to get into the farming industry on the ownership side has been such that it has created a more unrealistic value on second class land than it has on good land. Men have seen the opportunity perhaps to buy 200 acres of land at €100 an acre, whereas €20,000 on good land would have only bought him 60 or 70 acres, but they thought the scope was that much bigger on the poorer land. Our farming fore- fathers were not dumb, and we have learnt that there is a limitation inherent in the land itself, which some of these people have found to their cost. I am sure a logical development will come out of this in which the price of the farm will reflect its ability to provide a man with a living doing every job he is trying to do.

Regarding the points raised by Mr. Morrey in his opening of the discussion, I was very interested that he did not put any faith in politicians. Nevertheless I think that the politician has had a fair influence, and that in spite of what Mr. Morrey said, the 4td. a gallon which the government gave to the milk producers was a far greater comfort to them this winter than the subsequent weather which we would have enjoyed one way or the other in any case.

I think that over the rest of Mr. Morrey’s points there is not very much difference in our approach. I do commend to this Society, if they are looking at the future of dairy husbandry, the fact that we are going to have this shift from the east to the west and the industry must be prepared to cope with it in the way in which it uses the products and the way it transports them.

On the question of substitutes, I come back to the point I made earlier. I am sure the discerning public will in the end come back to the real thing, and much as YOU may hope for a five-day week to squeeze the liquid out of grass by some

tzFganization, the National Farmers, Union is

Dairy Technology has made to the industry, and I am sure that Mr. Morrey has made you aware that in the future you will all have to take some account of feasibility and practic- ability as well as scientific possibilities. Mr. J. Ridley Rowling: I am interested in this point on a move to the west. Mr. Morrey said that milk production in

the west has not been fully exploited. Could I ask Mr. Morrey if the west were fully exploited in the production of milk, which counties would be largely used and would those exploitable counties be able to provide the whole of the milk requirements of England and Wales in the next ten years? Mr. J. S. Morrey: To the last part of the question I would like to be able to say that I hope not, but I am afraid it will be so. There is a vast potential still there, and when 1 say in the west, I really mean the high rainfall reasonable winter areas, the largely high rainfall grass growing areas. This is a very rough and ready line, but say from Brighton curving round to Anglesey and discarding a few nasty spots inside which are drought areas. The really attractive areas, of course, are the farming parts of Devon and Cornwall, Pembroke and Carmarthen, perhaps including Wiltshire, which is the best grass growing area I am told due to purely natural forces, Somerset, of course, and Dorset. This leaves out some very attractive grass growing areas, such as Ayrshire and Cumberland in the north of England, but it is the high rainfall areas with reasonable grass growing temperatures which are suitable. The potential here, to me as a Board member, is almost frightening; what grass can do given the opportunity, really is immense. The potential of grass is such that it can carry cost of external transport to where the milk is required. Dr. R. Scott: May 1 make a comment in connection with the use of land. The Ministry of Environment has a great problem to solve in the very near future. We shall need a re- allocation Of land in this Country; we are taking a lot Of good agridtural land for airports, housing and SO forth, we shall need vastly increased acreage for sport and recreation in view of the coming five-day week and I think quite a lot of the Poorer class land could well be used for this Purpose if it were allocated now. But there does not Seem to be any move afoot to have a Serious look at agriCU1tUral land in general. We get bogged down on airports and so forth without looking at the country as a whole, and I think somebody ought to be Cogitating on this Problem very seriously. Otherwise we will find that we do not have the land available for what we have to do with it.

One other Point, if we do join the Common Market, and even if we do not, Normandy can supply London with all the milk it wants. In fact, Normandy can produce more milk than is produced in the whole of this country. If one looks at the EEC reports, one Sees that France is Paying €88 to a farmer to slaughter his COW in order not to produce milk.

if we go into the Common Market they have still got to live in the way that we live and it still costs approximately a

unknown process, we shall be tied to the cow’s tail for many No matter how Normandy produces

acutely conscious of the contribution which the Society of shilling a gallon to get it from Normandy into England to and this is a fort to me*

VOTE OF THANKS Miss K. D. Maddever proposed the vote of thanks to the speaker and Opener Of discussion*

(Applause.)


AFTERNOON SESSION

The following business was transacted at the commencement of the afternoon session :

1. To appoint Auditors (item deferred from the Annual General Meeting, see Vol. 24 (I), 26).

Mr. C. S. Miles, the Honorary Treasurer, reported that following the remit from the members at the Annual General Meeting, the Council had duly investigated the question of alternative Auditors. The matter had been discussed with three firms of Chartered Accountants, one of which, Messrs. Thorne, Lancaster & Co., 26 Old Bailey, London, E.C.4, having consulted with the Society’s former Auditors, Messrs. Chalmers, Impey & Co., St. Alphage House, Fore Street, London, E.C.2, had indicated that they would be prepared to undertake the audit work at a fee of €75 per annum.

Upon the proposal of Miss S. W. McCulloch,

seconded by Dr. R. Scott, Messrs. Thorne, Lancaster & Co. were unanimously appointed Auditors to the Society for the current year.

2. To consider applications for membership from applicants unable to find the necessary sponsors and, if agreed, effect election under Rule 7.

The President reported receipt of membership forms from two applicants who had been unable to obtain the necessary sponsors, and called upon the Secretary to give details to enable enrolment to be effected under the provisions of Rule 7.

After the necessary information had been pro- vided and upon the proposal of Mrs. 0. G. Stewart, seconded by Mr. Burton, Messrs. H. R. Fowler and C. C. Small were duly elected members of the Society.

BY R . S . R E N W I C K

Technical Manager, Creameries Division, Milk Marketing Board

Cheesemaking is changing and as the years go on the rate of change increases, so that today, no matter how ‘way out’ a new idea or a new piece of equipment may appear to be, it is given due consideration before being either accepted or discarded.

This is indeed a great step forward when one considers that not many years ago some of us at some time refused to accept one or all of the following:

Pasteurization of cheese milk; Mechanical cutting of the curd in the vat; Introduction of block cheese; Reducing the pressing time from 4 days to 1 day;

The pumping of curds and whey. It really is incredible how conservative we have

been in the past. Until now it has been possible to refuse to recognize and accept progress in technology and engineering, but this is no longer so. Pressures are coming to bear to force drastic changes within the industry. Labour is becoming more expensive and more selective in the choice of employment and the big buyers are demanding more exacting specifications for cheese quality. Staff will not continue to work under the conditions existing in the majority of our cheesemaking creameries. Buildings and equipment in general are written off and the industry requires an enormous injection of capital to bring it up to date and meet the challenge of the 70s.

and

Hygiene, coupled with mechanization, will be the key to success and together they will give a complete new image to what is one of the oldest of manu- facturing processes.

It is a sad reflection on our engineering skills that for cheese mechanization we have to look to Australia, New Zealand or the Continent for proven equipment. This has made appraisal of the new systems and equipment difficult, and in some cases impossible, due either to distance or the capital cost of purchase on trial, or both.

Many of you I am sure, like myself, knowing that the Dairy Congress was being held in Australia last year, put off the day of decision until the equipment could be appraised in action and the cheese being made with it closely examined. We had all digested the write-ups and were in fact further confused by the knowledge that our friends in Australia and New Zealand did not agree on some of the more fundamental stages of Cheddar cheesemaking.

Description of cheesemaking systems Three systems have been developed : ‘Cheesemaker’ by CSIRO in Australia, ‘Cheddarmaster’ by the New Zealand Dairy Research Institute, and ‘Lactomatic’ by the Lactose Company in Tasmania.

The Cheesemaker system is divided into four sections :

Cheesemaker I covering curd formation,

Journal of the Society of Dairy Technology, Vol. 24, Nos. 2 & 3, April-July, 1971 75

subject: developments in the dairy industry : dairy husbandry

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