orla.shortall's blog

The joy of grazing

orla.shortall — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 10:32:16 +0000

I think an important dimension of debates about the future of livestock farming, and farming more widely, is what give people’s lives meaning, purpose and joy. I wrote previously about how grazing was seen in Ireland and the UK in terms of economics, environmental sustainability and animal welfare. When I interviewed farmers in the UK and Ireland, an important additional element that came out was that farmers who grazed enjoyed grazing. A farmer in England said:

“I like the countryside. I like the noise, from the birds. I like the growth. I like the cows going out, that’s the number one thing.”

Here, appreciation of the natural life on his farm is bound up with the experience of the cows grazing. Another farmers said:

“I’d be really, really disappointed if we, if our cows were in all the time, because i like having them outside. I just like that part of it, you know, to get out there in the field with them, and, especially you can’t beat a nice sunny day, going and getting the cows in.”

This experience was reiterated by many, many people I interviewed who grazed. (Views weren’t homogenous of course. for some grazing was a hassle and not worth the effort. And when they moved production indoors they were convinced neither they nor the cows missed going outside.)

It could be easy to sentimentalise or trivialise the positives of being outside in the field with cows on a sunny day. Emotions and experience have long been the poor relation to the rationality and objectivity of economics or science. But I would argue this experience is important and should be factored into decision making about the future of livestock farming. How we live and what we value matters.

In the UK there are economic, animal welfare and environmental arguments made for different kinds of dairy systems, from low input grazing, to intensive, high-input systems. And discussions about what form livestock farming should take are within the shadow of bigger, existential arguments that livestock farming should be drastically reduced to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems.

Change is needed. (I think we do need to reduce cow numbers and produce and consume less meat and dairy. Not because cows or farmers are uniquely guilty, but because the climate crisis is so huge reductions and change are necessary across pretty much all sectors of modern existence.)

But I would hate to see policy and industry decisions made based on a certain interpretation of the numbers that favours input and scale-based ‘sustainable intensification’. I.e. a future where we all consume a lot fewer meat and dairy products, with the remaining production happening in a few, large, tightly controlled units. This would involve losing some interconnectedness between cows, people, their environment and society.

From my interviews I also understood that grazing is difficult: the climate is changing which can make putting cows outside a challenge. And not all grazing is created equally from an environmental point of view: You can have intensive grazing and regenerative grazing and many variations in between with widely different environmental impacts. so work, advise, infrastructure and support are needed for sustainable grazing to happen.

What I’m arguing is that language of emotions, experience, meaning has a place alongside economics, sustainability assessment and kpis in on-farm and sector wide decision making. For the public, for animals and for farmers.

Is it ‘natural’ for cows to graze?

orla.shortall — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 09:35:34 +0000

This last while, I've been chewing over the value of the word 'natural' in debates about agriculture. In farmer and stakeholder interviews about the ethics of cows staying indoors all year round, the word 'natural' has been coming up again and again. It is however a notoriously complicated and thorny word, with several meanings. Natural can mean the opposite of artificial: something that is self-generating and doesn’t depend on human interference, like a forest or an animal. There’s the idea of ‘natural purpose’: what humans or animals are meant to do because they evolved that way. And the ‘unnatural’ is a negative word that can mean something is monstrous or dangerous.

All of those meanings came up in the interviews. Many people said they like to see cows graze because it’s natural: cows have evolved to graze and we'd arguably change cows' nature if they don’t graze (it’s unnatural). And there’s the idea that what is natural is good: there’s more ‘nature’ in a field than a shed, and allowing cows to experience nature is a good thing.

Those who don't think grazing is necessary said that the 'natural' doesn't have any value in this debate: cows are no longer 'natural' creatures since they've already been bred to fit into a modern, human made system. And the 'natural' in animal welfare is confusing and misplaced because hunger, violence, distress, and suffering are part of 'nature'. Surely one of the benefits of farming is cows having a better, cosier life than their natural ancestors?

It's a philosophical debate as much as one based on science, about the meaning and role of the ‘natural’.

Thinking about it made me go back to the American feminist philosopher Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ where she asks us to go beyond ideas about natural v artificial. The essay memorably ends with the line:

“I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”

Haraway is saying that a simplistic and innocent idea of ‘nature’: mother earth or a nature goddess, is no longer helpful to us. Instead, she proposes the idea of the cyborg, where the difference between animals, humans and machines is not clear, and leaving behind old distinctions between the 'natural' and the 'artificial' allows us to imagine a more creative, playful and ethical future.

I remember reading this essay in the University of Nottingham Library in the first year of my PhD in 2011. I was drinking an overly sweet Starbucks (milky) hot chocolate and struggling to digest the meaning of Haraway's words. At the time, I didn't really have a frame of reference to understand what she was saying.

Each time I re-read it I understand it a little better, and it came to mind analysing the dairy farmer interviews. In the stories farmers told about their cows, they understandably didn’t argue that the cow were ‘natural’ in the sense of separate from human interference. When they talked about the cows’ desire to graze and their nature as grazing animals, they described this nature as shaped by the domesticated routine on the farm. The farmers I spoke to told stories of the cows knowing when it was time to go out in spring. It might be the smell of the grass growing, or the weather changing, or the cows' internal clock, but at a certain time in spring cows 'roar' to be let out. (Lots of people said 'roar', I think cows that 'roar' should feature in children's books more). If the cows heard a gate rattling, they would rush towards it thinking it was time. You might have seen videos of cows frolicking when let out in spring. If you haven't, look them up, it's really fun.

But equally, these farmers said cows were happy to come inside in autumn. You could leave the gate open on a cold November day and no cow would move. And many farmers whose cows were housed all year round told stories of a gate being left open and the cows having no interest in outside the shed.

This comes back to Haraway: there is no such thing as a purely ‘natural’ dairy cow (a ‘goddess cow?’) there are only ‘cyborg cows’: cows that know how to interact with the various machines on the farm (slurry scrapers, feed dispensers, milking machines etc.) and whose desires to graze (or not) are shaped by what’s comfortable and feasible on the farm, as much as by their ancestry as grazing animals.

Even if cows aren't 'natural' in the sense of separate from human interference, I think the concept of nature could still have value in debates about dairy farming. Personally, I’m interested in the idea that nature/the outside world has some sort of intrinsic value because it’s natural. There are lots of studies showing being outside/in nature/in greenspace is good for human wellbeing. There are different theories as to why this is: physical activity, social activity, connection with place etc. We might instinctively feel that’s being ‘in nature’ is good for us, but it’s actually quite hard to pin down why that is.

I think it’s plausible that whatever is good for us about being in nature could also be good for cows. And so, we can think about what it is about ‘nature’ that dairy cows need, and how that fits in with an indoor or grazing system.

What does inside and outside mean on a dairy farm?

orla.shortall — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 09:47:46 +0000

This morning I cycled to my friend’s house to work there as part of her extended household. At the roundabout I used to pass every day on the way to work, it suddenly felt odd to be outside. The familiar location made me think of pre-pandemic times so my mind automatically questioned whether this activity from the past was currently okay. You forget what the rules of being outside are, on a visceral level. The pandemic has changed our relationship with ‘outside’ and ‘inside’.

Before the pandemic, I asked the farmers I interviewed for the ‘Cows eat grass, don’t they?’ project how much time they spent working inside versus outside. The project is ostensibly about views on what cows eat and where they spend their time, but I wanted to know how that overlapped with farmers.

The question led to unexpected confusion about what I meant by ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Was outside the fields, or also the cowsheds and milking parlour? Most people interpreted ‘outside’ to mean any space on the farm, that wasn’t a building for human habitation. But ‘outside’ for the cows was different: it meant in the open air. The farm buildings were ‘inside’ for the cows: they were the cows’ home or place of work.

People used arguments about cows and people having similar and different spheres to justify keeping cows in all year round, or the need for cows to graze. Cows are similar to people in that they need a comfy home: sheltered from the elements. For some that meant cows are happy to live inside all year round. Cows, like humans, aren’t wild creatures, they’re domesticated and used to millennia of agrarian civilisation. And a field isn’t a ‘natural’ environment either. It might not have shelter, it’s a highly managed environment. Better habitation inside for people has been part of the development of civilisation and it might be for cows too.

For farmers who did graze their cows, there was some overlap between farmer and cow experiences of outside. When the cows didn’t go outside in the winter the farmer didn’t do much outside either. Farmers said there weren’t many outside jobs to do in winter. The grass wasn’t growing. For those who let the cows out this was a changing of the seasons and a start to their outside work as well. They said it was a relief not to have to feed the cows inside every day and clean the shed. And they started doing their grass walk to keep on eye on how it was growing, as well as taking the cows in and out for milking. Some said the cows wanted to go outside. They could smell the grass, and they got restless and would stand by the door of the shed or roar to be let out.

Many people said they had ‘aesthetic’ or ‘personal’ preference to see cows outside. They said it as a personal view, not to generalise, and not to be disrespectful or judgemental of farmers who do house the cows all year round. And, frustratingly, one interviewee pointed out that it’s not even possible to talk about ‘cows’: maybe some like going outside and some like being inside more or less. Like people.

We could abstract the positive associations with ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to make arguments about cows’ housing clearer. Outside represents freedom of movement and ability to express social behaviours, contact with the natural world: sun, earth, wind rain, and tradition and agricultural heritage. Inside represents comfort, security, safety, rest. Those are important concepts which give human and animal lives meaning, which is why the question of cow housing touches a nerve with the public and people in the industry.

Arguments from interviewees in the project did serve to complicate simplistic notions associated with inside and outside housing. But the core questions remain of how the industry can operate to give cows and humans a satisfying and dignified standard of living.

And what is the purpose of decisions about the conditions in which they’re kept, either inside or outside? Is it to make the cows lives, and the farmers’ and the consumers’ lives better in some way? Or some other reason, like just making more money, producing more milk or barely surviving within dairy farming?

Choice, control, autonomy and purpose are important concepts as we try to navigate inside and outside spaces in the current situation. And they’re important ones to keep in mind for the animals we’ve brought into the sphere of our civilisation.

The grass-based system and work life balance in Ireland

orla.shortall — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 14:28:36 +0000

The ‘Cows eat grass, don’t they?’ project is a social sciences project exploring the future of grass-based, higher input and indoor dairy systems in the UK and Ireland. The project runs from 2018-2021 and is funded by the British Academy. 19 interviews were carried out with people working in the dairy industry in Ireland, including 11 from industry, 4 from academia, 1 from an NGO and 3 from government. 19 interviews with dairy farmers in Leinster and Munster were carried out. 26 industry documents were analysed.

Results on Irish dairy expansion, power structures within the grass-based system and work life balance:

Most interviewees were optimistic and positive about expansion and supportive of the grass-based system.
But low milk prices and unequal power structures mean expansion also isn’t fully seen as a choice for farmers.
This can create stress and a feeling of lack of control over their own farm and their place in the industry.
In addition, farmers feel like public debate is turning against them in relation to the environment and animal welfare.
This can also create stress and a feeling of lack of control over the public narrative about the work they do.
Ideally, farmers would like higher milk prices and more control over the public and industry conditions they work within.
Expansion had differing impacts on work life balance – beneficial for some, not for others.
When they expanded some people were able to hire more labour and reduce their own workload. Others worked extra hours to manage the increase in cow numbers.
Farmers wanted work life balance to be valued better in the industry and by other farmers.
Working hard was traditionally seen as part of being a ‘good farmer’.
More emphasis within the industry on the importance of a good work life balance would help restore some feeling of control and align the direction of the industry with what farmers want for their own working life.
Creating shared values around not working long hours is useful but at the same time doesn’t solve problems around structural inequality and the financial and time pressures farmers are under.

Short video about the results here.

January interviews in Ireland

orla.shortall — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 11:46:09 +0000

January is a good time to interview Irish dairy farmers: the majority calve in spring so they’re in the middle of a relative lull when milking has stopped before the cows calve. (There are also lingering tins of Christmas biscuits for sit down interviews.) The weather was mercifully mild and I carried out 20 interviews with farmers who very kindly gave up their time for the ‘Cows eat grass, don’t they?’ project in Louth, Meath, Kildare, Cork, Limerick and Kerry. Interviews are exploring the type of systems farmers operate in terms of feeding and housing, their views on other systems, how well post-milk-quota-removal expansion has gone and where they see the dairy industry going. Here’s some personal and professional reflections so far:

Most people agreed there would be fewer, bigger farms in the future, because of stagnant milk prices and lack of people wanting/able to take over farms, as much as any choices about farm system.
Farmers I spoke to who couldn’t expand because they couldn’t get land around them were worried about the future of the sub-100 cow family farm.
Farm dogs are friendlier and less disciplined than you might expect: a lot of jumping up with muddy paws.
I heard little talk of land going to daughters or nieces.
There was no one, overarching, cultural attitude towards on-farm debt, it varied a lot: some seeing it as the way to secure a viable and fulfilling future, some pragmatic but wary, some very debt averse because it could compromise their autonomy or even their ownership of their land.
Roads in Ireland are often better than Scotland? More EU money?
Irish radio commentators are obsessed with drugs at the moment. There was a spate of grim drug-related gangland killings but talk more widely of the morality of drug use – breaking the law, addiction, funding drug gangs.
People no longer know I’m Irish, I was coming from a UK institution and the accent must be less clear.
Some people really love dairy farming and it does seem like shame if they could no longer do it because their farm is too small to be viable in the future.
The number of cows per one working person varied massively – farmers managing 180 cows by themselves or 80 between 2 people.
The farmers I spoke to were mostly ‘progressive’ interested farmers and they mostly all knew the key performance indicators they should be working on. In the Irish system you minimise:

          - Bought in feed
          - Grass cover growing too high before the cows get to it because it gets ‘stemmy’ and less nutritious
          - The cows’ size
          - The length of time it takes you to calve in spring.
You maximise:
           - Milk solids of fat and protein per cow (within limits of bought in feed)
           - Grass growth per hectare per year
           - The number of cows in the herd within the parameters of available land and labour.

Farmers I spoke to were less concerned about the environment than I might’ve expected. I asked “What would you like to see happen in relation to the environment?” and many said more recognition of what they’re doing in terms of sequestering carbon in grassland soils rather than change in practice.
There was some appetite for mixed grass swards and clover use that minimise fertiliser use, pending more research and advice about how to manage them.
With cups of tea/coffee most of the farmers I spoke to gave me carton milk rather than milk from the bulk tank. One farmer cited TB as the reason.
West Cork is very beautiful and somehow more hospitable feeling a landscape than the Scottish Highlands.
There were mixed feelings about spring – the excitement of calving and new life, the milk cheque starting again and letting the cows out to grass. But also the exhaustion of calving and disrupted sleep, and worry about the weather: if it’ll be too wet for the cows to stay on grass.
A lot of people’s favourite time of the year was late summer: calving and silage cutting is finished, there’s a milk cheque coming in and the weather might be nice.

I’ve returned to the UK to finish interviewing farmers there and start the lengthy and involved process of analysing the interviews.

What role for grazing in the UK and Ireland?

orla.shortall — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 12:22:34 +0000

The first academic paper from the ‘Cows eat grass, don’t they?’ project was published this week. You can read an open access version of the paper here. One of the reasons I started this project was because I was coming across such different views about what the dairy sectors in Ireland and the UK should look like and I wanted to explore why this was. This paper tackles this by looking in detail at the views of key people involved in the dairy industry about where the dairy sector should go and exploring where these views come from.

I found that there were very different views of the ideal dairy sector in the UK and Ireland, between and within both countries. The research involved interviews with people from government, academia, industry and charities; as well as analysing documents.

In Ireland the importance of grass and grazing was emphasised again and again, specifically the low cost grass based system. Whereas in the UK the dominant view was that economic, environmental and animal welfare outcomes don’t depend on the type of system but rather on management and facilities: a ‘good farmer’ can make any type of system work.

In Ireland the grass based system was seen to be the lowest cost production system; to have environmental benefits because carbon is sequestered in soil; and high animal welfare because it is a ‘natural’ system where the cows can graze. Divergent views were that a higher input system is rational because Irish farmers are limited by land to expand and feeding more concentrate to increase yields can be economically viable. From an environmental point of view higher input systems mean more milk production per cow meaning fewer methane emissions per litre of milk. It was seen that animal welfare can be higher because ‘lean’ grass based systems can result in hunger in cows. Another marginal view was that the Irish dairy sector has expanded too quickly since quotas were removed in 2015, as a result farmers are suffering economically, and environmental and animal welfare outcomes have worsened.

In the UK in contrast this vision of a low cost pasture based system was not the mainstream view. Low costs pasture based systems were rather seen as carving out a niche on the market place through pasture based labels. Another marginal view promoted higher producing and indoor systems as the way forward for the industry.

The paper shows how some of the differences between Ireland the UK are related to differences in the structure of their dairy sectors – Ireland’s is based on seasonal production for processed goods destined for export whereas the UK has a larger demand for liquid milk all year round. It also shows how the views do represent different interpretations of a desirable present and future for the dairy industry and how views and values are shaped by particular contexts.

"You shouldn't be embarrassed about having 30 cows" Interview poem.

orla.shortall — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 15:42:06 +0000

The following is a "poem" about the future of dairy farm size and ownership structure in the UK and Ireland. It's comprised of direct quotes from interviews with key stakeholders and document analysis in both countries. You can read more details about the data collection at the end. The country of the interviewee is given after each quote. It's intended to show the range of different views people expressed about farm size and farm structure.

Expansion has gone phenomenally well. (Ireland)

It’s coming, it’s here. It’s here, and it’s not nice. It’s not nice to see… it’s not nice to see small being pushed out. I don’t like it. And I think, where, because right now, we are using them to support our marketing, you know, we do take pictures of the family together and, you know, and, the, the child feeding the calves, and you know, they all, as a unit, standing by the parlour. (Ireland)

Yeah, like, we, we, there’s an old saying here, profit is sanity, you know, milk yield is vanity. And, it is true. They go down to the pub at night, they’re talking milk yield. You know.……What does that mean? (Ireland)

So it’s always challenging, isn’t it, because everybody, ultimately, will view success, our farmers will view success as their ability to produce more litres and have more cows. (Ireland)

A long tradition of farming at world market prices has built up a very clear business ethic in the dairy farming sector in NZ which is not fully mirrored in Ireland which still bears a lot of hallmarks of family farming type operations. (O’Donoghue et al., 2015)

No one is born with a right to do anything. It’s got to work in a market place, hasn’t it? The dairy industry can’t be a charity case. It’s got to be efficient and proper to make it, at the end of the day. (UK)

Once dairy farmers have maximised their efficiency for any given scale of production, they need the opportunity to expand their businesses to continue to improve efficiency through achieving economies of scale by spreading fixed costs over a larger scale of production. This means that there is a strong correlation between farm size and efficiency. (Dairy UK, 2017)

All the, you know, all the fixed costs aren’t diluted, so this is the other fucking thing that bugs me around the high input, you know, apparently, the more milk you produce, you dilute all the fixed costs. (Ireland)

and, but I have this little shudder in my bones, thinking that that’s the way it’s going. (Ireland)

What would my dairy farm look like? It would be a lot bigger than it was. It would, and we ceased, we stopped production because of, it just wasn’t viable for the size of farm, so it would be a lot bigger today than it was. (UK)

Big can be really, really good. (UK)

You shouldn’t be embarrassed about having thirty cows. (Ireland)

There was a local young farmer here and he was being hailed for increasing his herd size and he was being praised. He’s ended up with real mental health problems. He got too many loans he couldn’t afford to pay back and he couldn’t afford to feed his animals. His business has gone to pot. There’s too much pressure on the farmers. (Ireland)

We haven’t moved away from family farms yet but I think it’s a question of time. (Ireland)

There's a hell of lot of – less…herd owners that are female than there are male and I think that's another aspect of it, so whether it's male or female, whoever wants the farm should be able to get into it. (Ireland)

But, you know, staying as you are, eventually, you’re going to get left behind. (Ireland)

However, developers argue that larger facilities will create employment opportunities, albeit of a different nature to those found on a small, traditional, family run farm. (POST, 2012)

DAFM (2010) Food Harvest Food Harvest 2020: A vision for Irish agro-food and fisherie. Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Dublin. Available at: https://www.agriculture.gov.ie/media/migration/foodindustrydevelopmenttr...

Dairy UK (2017) The white paper. London.

O’Donoghue C, Creamer R, Crosson P, et al. (2015) Drivers of agricultural land use change in Ireland to 2025.

POST (2012) Livestock Super Farms. POSTnote. London. Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn404_livestock_super_farms...

Interviews were carried out between September 2018 and Feburary 2019 with 19 key stakeholders in the dairy industry in Ireland and 25 in the UK from industry, government, academia and non-governmental organisations. 26 Irish documents were analysed and 38 UK documents.

Vegan pie or rose veal? Catering to a broad church at the Ethical Farming conference

orla.shortall — Fri, 17 May 2019 15:27:38 +0000

It’s not often you see a vegan lunch option at a farming conference on a dairy farm. But that was part of the ‘broad church’ approach at the Ethical Farming Conference: a farming conference about agricultural sustainability organised by four farms in Scotland, taking place on the Ethical Dairy in Dumfries and Galloway. Mary Clear of Incredible Edibles repeated the phrase ‘broad church’ when she cautiously asked the vegetarians and “the other v word” in the audience to raise their hands. She spoke just after Dr Zoe Harcombe gave a blistering take down of the nutritional arguments against eating red meat and dairy. Dr Harcombe argued that a vegetarian or vegan diet make little sense from a purely nutritional point of view. Mary Clear said “I'm vegetarian and I was feeling a little on my own, I’m sitting in the meat eating section over there, but I thought 'I’m a big girl in a big tent so I’ll check in'.” The phrases ‘broad tent’ and ‘broad church’ were repeated throughout the day: whoever is interested in creating a sustainable and ethical food system is welcome.

Presentations covered environmental aspects of farming: the importance of soil carbon and the example of Peelham farm which has significantly enhanced its biodiversity; animal welfare; the nutritional value of red meat and dairy; and how to value public goods produced from agriculture. One of the themes of the day was the lack of scientific research to back up practices which may be more marginal within the food sector: farmers have anecdotal evidence that practices bring animal welfare, environmental or nutritional benefits but research in a farm setting to scale has not been carried out. Another theme was community and how farmers who are acting at the fringes pursuing sustainable practices can feel isolated and unsupported. Two farmers stated their neighbours thought of them as “hairy toed hippies” and that they were “away with the fairies”. There was discussion of the process of making innovation mainstream: practices seen as fringe can and have been accepted as mainstream over time, but this takes thankless work from pioneers.

The hosts for the day Wilma and David Finlay of the Ethical Dairy are pioneering a ‘calf with cow’ dairy system where the dairy calves are kept with their mother for the first five months. Lunch included rose veal from the milk-fattened calves and their ice-cream and cheese produced from the milk on the farm. It was stated Wilma and David had gone out of their way to invite people to the conference who did not agree with them to broaden the conversation and make sure the conference was not an echo chamber. The conference will hopefully become a regular event and if there’s one thing the food system needs it’s respectful and engaged conversations between people who do not agree, over whatever kind of lunch they choose to eat.

Photos from Clementine Sandison @clemsandison

Thanks to the farmers who took part in the survey

orla.shortall — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 16:02:16 +0000

A sincere thank you to everyone who took part in the farmer survey. One of the most satisfying parts of being a social science researcher is people engaging with the questions you’re posing and taking the time to respond. Without that engagement we’d just be sitting in a room wondering what farmers think about year round housed systems or why they chose the system they did.

I designed a survey about farmers’ production systems and views on pasture, high input and indoor systems. There have been 761 responses: 391 from Ireland, 370 from UK (76 in England, 15 in Wales, 254 in Scotland, and 25 in Northern Ireland). We pledged £2 (and equivalent in euros) to charities helping farmers for every survey completed. We have raised €869.35 for the Mind Our Farm Families phoneline run by Pieta House and the IFA in Ireland, £504 for the Royal Scottish Agricultural Benevolent Institute, £172 for the Royal Agriculture Benevolent Institute and £50 for Rural Support Northern Ireland. That's a total of £1508 or €1751. A donation has been made to Pieta House and is on its way to the other charities.Edit

The UK sample is very Scotland heavy, and Scotland has the smallest number of dairy farmers of the countries in the UK. Scottish farms tend to be bigger and potentially more indoor focused than other UK farms. The survey was sent by post to all Scottish dairy farmers, whereas it was disseminated through farming organisations and the media in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. However the responses match the demographics of UK wide dairy sector quite well so the sample should be sufficient for a UK/Ireland comparison.

One of the best parts of my job is interviewing people where you get to sit down with someone and ask about their experiences and get insight into their perspective on the world. But you also can’t beat the dopamine hit that comes from pressing a button and getting an instant, interesting statistical answer. A very wide range of farmers responded to the survey. The biggest farm was 1800 cows and the smallest was 10. Milk yields ranged from 16,000 litres per cow per year to 3000. In the UK 19% housed all or some of the cows all year round and in Ireland 2%. A total of 111 farmers left a comment at the end of the survey to express an additional sentiment about the dairy industry and 175 agreed to take part in a one to one interview in the next phase of the project.

I’m currently undertaking analysis and will release the results in due course. Farmers who responded were given the option of receiving the results of the research and I’ll keep those who assented updated of the findings. In the meantime, thank you for your time and insights.

What does grass fed milk mean?

orla.shortall — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 15:17:26 +0000

A man in California is suing Ornua: the organisation that markets and sells Irish dairy products abroad over claims that Kerrygold butter is “grass-fed”. The man is claiming false advertising because Irish cows do not subsist on grass alone but their diet is supplemented by grain and meal which may include genetically modified (GM) ingredients.

The court case highlights the ongoing debate over what “grass fed” dairy produce means and if there are benefits to it. Most of us would assume that milk is made from cows that graze, but in fact grazing is a minority practice in dairy production systems globally. There are claims that up to 90% of milk globally is produced from cows that don’t graze.

Grass fed milk is promoted by its proponents, including those in Ireland, as more environmentally friendly, higher animal welfare, more nutritious and tastier than milk produced from cows who don’t graze and/or have a large proportion of cereals and meal in their diet, based on scientific evidence. These claims are being hotly disputed by other countries however.

The role of concentrate and meal in cows’ diets is controversial because, as the lawsuit highlights, supply chains using genetically modified ingredients are not separated out in conventional systems. Genetically modified foods for human consumption are generally not allowed on the EU market, but are allowed for animal feed. Other ingredients such as soya and palm oil have been controversial because of links with destruction of valuable ecosystems and unfair labour conditions.

Studies show that the public want cows to graze. Market demand provides Ireland with a unique marketing opportunity within Europe to promote their “grass based” production system. The vast majority of dairy cows in Ireland spend the majority of their time on grass, and in the south west dairy hub cows spend up to 300 days a year on grass.

But there is no agreed definition or market protection of “grass fed” produce in Ireland. There is an EU directive on the definition of “free range” poultry products, but not on dairy. I’m currently undertaking interviews with key stakeholders in Ireland and most state that a definition is necessary to differentiate Ireland on the market place. Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, are considering different definitions, including 95% of fresh weight feed coming from forage: grazed grass and silage. The co-op and processor Glanbia have developed their own Truly Grass Fed label which stipulates at least 250 days on grass.

Grass based labels have emerged from other countries in the meantime. There are claims in Ireland that some of these may not actually involve grazing as per the traditional system, but only need access to pasture to comply, which may be a paddock that cows loaf in but do not actually graze from.

The UK has a more diverse range of dairy farm systems than Ireland, from “traditional” seasonal grazing with little additional feed up to total confinement system with no grazing. A number of grazing labels have emerged here, see the table below. However, in interviews for the ‘Cows eat grass, don’t they?’ project many key stakeholders in the UK do not support the differentiation of the UK market based on grazing. Instead they question the claims that grazing provides better environmental, welfare, nutritional and taste benefits, and see labels as creating confusion and division in the industry. A recent Nuffield Scholarship report by journalist Tom Levitt called for more differentiation and branding in the UK sector to add value and communicate to consumers that milk was a premium product, but the report did not support grass based labels.

An EU directive on what “grass fed milk” means, if it were to happen, might suit those in continental Europe who graze for less of the year, but not help Ireland show that its system is different. Such a directive would also likely not be welcomed by many in the UK who don’t want this distinction to grow on the UK market. This debate will continue to heat up in future and questions such as: Should ‘grass fed cows’ eat GM feed? Does pasture based milk have to involve the cows actually eating and producing milk from grass or is enough for them to be in the open air? Will there ever be cross-country scientific consensus over welfare, environmental and nutritional benefits, or otherwise, of grass fed milk? Is grass fed milk a product for the masses or a niche market? Is a measure of days at grass or proportion of grass in diet a better metric for what “grass based” means? will play on.

Country	Label	Organisation	Minimum days at grass
Ireland	Truly grass fed	Glanbia	250
UK	Pasture Promise	The Free range Dairy. Available in Asda, Morrisons and Booths stores.	180
UK	Pasture for Life	Pasture for Life Association	100% grass fed
UK	Royal Society for Protection of Cruelty to Animals welfare standards for dairy cattle	Royal Society for Protection of Cruelty to Animals. Available at Marks and Spencers.	Predicted number of days whereby access to pasture may not be reasonable due to inclement weather – Average transition/freshly calved period (in days). For at least 4, ideally 6 hours a day.
UK	Waitrose milk	Waitrose	120
UK	Organic milk	Soil Association	Whenever weather allows – average 200 days. Minimum 60% grass in diet.
The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany	Meadow Milk	Friesland Campina	120, at least 6 hours a day