An open meeting following the 2026 AGM on 8 September.
TDEG were delighted to welcome Steve West, dairy consultant and Judy and Ross Dilks, organic farmers at Hassop Family Farm to give presentations about their work. The talks were followed by questions and discussion.
Dairy Farming and the Environment, a presentation by Steve West, dairy consultant
Steve West has a genetics background but now works as a dairy consultant to farmers and processors. His advice also includes market analysis, business and technical advice including genetics, nutrition and optimising productivity.
Steve presented some key underpinning facts about UK agriculture.
8% of the farm businesses produce 62% of the output from 33% of the land.
55% of milk is processed by two companies. 75% by the top four.
71% of GBs agricultural land is only economically suitable for growing forage/grass.
If the worlds 278M cows were as efficient as a British cow, we would only need around 76M to produce the same amount of milk.
The British herd has shrunk to 45% of the size it was in 1950 but is producing 20% more milk.
Steve went on to explain some of the main complexities of the industry. Dairy farming impact the environment in many ways including carbon emissions (see figure), water pollution, ammonia and biodiversity. The Paris Agreement has pressured the industry to reduce carbon emissions. The fact that methane emissions, from natural rumen fermentation in cows, is more than 25 times more warming than carbon dioxide has put dairy production in the spotlight. To make the comparison fair, for UK producers and other food types, emissions reductions need to be understood in the light of the nutrition produced, and other consequences.
Figure: Greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain, including methane, in kilograms of carbon dioxide- equivalents per kilogram of food, from the global average farm. Annotations are for UK farms.
Only 2% of cows are farmed in Western Europe (79% in Asia, Africa and South America), and their average carbon footprint is much lower than the global average figures on the bar chart (see annotations). For example milk produced on the average Western European farm emits 1.2kg compared to the global average of 3.15kg, due to much more efficient production processes. These figures also ignore the carbon savings achieved by good soil management, renewable energy creation on farms and tree or hedge planting on farmland. Steve argued that methane emissions from cows are sustainable because they are constantly recycled (burps oxidise into carbon dioxide which photosynthesizes into plants that cows eat) over about a 12 year timeframe. Emissions from fossil fuels are not sustainable because they release greenhouse gases from prehistoric tropical forests.
Steve spoke about the tight margins and the pressure from processors on carbon metrics were requiring farmers to become more and more efficient and this was driving intensification and growth of farms, making it challenging to fully consider nature outcomes without incentives.
67% of the world’s agricultural land is ‘marginal’ and we need to feed 10 Billion people by 2050. Steve presented work by Dr Anne Mottet that showed a cow could create 1kg of human edible protein from 0.6kg of human edible protein. Cows also have a role in building organic matter in soil just by bringing them into arable rotations – just 1% increase in soil organic matter can store an additional 10 tonnes/hectare of carbon.
10 tonnes/hectare of carbon.
Steve didn’t shy away from the areas the industry need to improve and certainly didn’t absolve responsibility but questioned if the focus was in the right place.
You can download all of Steve’s slides as a pdf here.
Organic farming at Hassop Farm, Judy and Ross Dilks
We then heard from Judy and Ross Dilks of Hassop Family Farm. The Dilks family have been farming on the Hassop Estate for over 30 years and went fully organic in 2018. Judy, along with her husband Bob, is the heart of the farm and her son Ross also works as an agronomist advising farmers and landowners.
Hassop Farm is a mixed farm of 500 acres with 200 dairy cows on herbal leys (a diverse seed mix of grasses, legumes, and herbs), break crops of peas and oats to rest the land and provide animal feed, wild flower margins, woodland and nature areas. Their only tools for productivity are crop rotation, careful use of manure and a reliance of the natural Nitrogen fixing ability of clovers as they do not have the flexibility of using sprays and fertilisers like conventional farms.
It took two years to convert the farm to organic and was a big risk for the family. There is an intense regime of frequent monitoring to ensure the farm and its milk complies with national organic standards. There are only 39,000 organic cows in Britain (out of 1.6 million) and the costs are higher so a premium is needed over conventional milk. The Dilks’ cows are Jersey cross and they calve in the spring and are milked 10 times a week.
This year’s dry weather has massively reduced grass production, but the varied root depth of the herbal leys has been a bit more resilient. Organic cattle feed is expensive and the price is very volatile so organic farms aim to grow as much home grown protein as possible to feed to their cows.
The industry carbon footprinting system does not credit grass or woodland sequestration and this is at least part of the reason why organic farms like Hassop are reported in official statistics as having high carbon footprints along with the reduced stocking rate.
Visitors to the farm can buy their milk and other organic products from the on site farm shop. Judy especially enjoys hosting events on the farm for nurseries and schools.
Bird, butterfly and wildflower experts are recording high biodiversity at the site with species including Barn Owl, Wall Brown Butterfly and Redstart.
You can download the presentation slides as a pdf here.
Questions and Discussion
Steve, Judy and Ross then took questions from the mixed audience of TDEG members, local farmers and other TDEG residents. Topics covered included the unfairness of carbon absorption by soil not being measured, low profitability driving young farmers away, milk processors now not willing to collect milk from farms below medium capacity, crop damage by deer and staffing challenges.
TDEG is extremely grateful to Judy and Ross Dilks, and Steve West for their amazing presentations and we look forward to continuing the conversation with them.
