Farmers withdraw amended plan for UK mega dairy

17-Feb-2011 - Last updated on 17-Feb-2011 at 17:19 GMT

Related tags Cattle

Opposition failed to abate after mega dairy plans were amended

Nocton Dairies has withdrawn its scaled back application to build a mega dairy near Lincoln, UK, in the face of persistent environmental objections.

The original application for an 8,100 cow dairy farm had been slimmed down to a proposal for a 3,770 cow farm. But despite reducing the scale of the project and making other amendments to appease planning authorities, Nocton Dairies has once again shelved its plans.

Objections

The farmers said continued opposition from the Environment Agency prompted its decision. They said the environmental regulator maintained that the plans contained insufficient information on the risks posed to the water table and failed to convince about the benefits.

Amendments to the original plan, including an additional £4m investment to improve the waste management system, were not enough to convince the Environment Agency otherwise.

In a statement Nocton was highly critical of the verdict.

“This precautionary stance and requests for new information reflect unfamiliarity with agriculture in general and the design of the modern dairy farm in particular.”

While Nocton said the stance of the Environment Agency was the sole reason behind its decision to put the plans on hold, the local planning authorities said afterwards that they were also hostile to the application.

Officers were recommending that members of the North Kesteven District Council reject the application due to be heard on 8 March on six grounds related to local water supply, odour, noise, impact on wildlife, failure to assess alternatives and concerns about the construction of worker houses. Around 1,600 objections had been lodged with the local planners.

Industry reaction

Dairy UK said it was disappointed that the Nocton application had been withdrawn.

In a statement, the industry association said: “Dairy UK believes that the planned dairy farm at Nocton, with its focus on high yield and investment in environmental measures, would have represented a further evolution in the constantly improving environmental performance of UK dairy farming.”

Meanwhile, the organic food lobby welcomed the news. Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, said: “Nocton was a potential animal welfare disaster and highlighted the way in which our farming systems have become increasingly divorced from what nature intended.”

The Nocton farmers said they will now be taking some time to consider their options.

2 comments

Government step in??

Posted by Banh, 20 February 2011 - 21:36 GMT

Well, I agree Melissa, with some of your opinions, however government has actually CAUSED much of agriculture's difficulties, as the Big G usually does in any of its management theories and schemes. Government oversight is usually done by theorists and academics, lawyers and people with perfect fingernails, not practitioners.

Here in the US, agriculture has been manipulated and subsidized so badly that only mega farms can exist. They in turn have turned farming into a "cash cow" with the subsidies they collect from government "experts" for growing, not growing, etc. We can't eat subsidies, and government is not the answer. They need to get out of the business of trying to "manage" industries, because they know nothing about the reality of those industries. They are politicians and lawyers, probably don't know which end of the cow to milk, but they surely know how to milk the taxpayer...

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Dairying today

Posted by Melissa, 18 February 2011 - 15:46 GMT

Being a farmers daughter myself, I have to agree with the Soil Association, that Nocton is likely to have been a welfare disaster, and also not what nature intended, therefore not being a sustainable, or a sensible, way of doing things.
The best thing for the environment, and the animals, and ultimately, the whole dairy industry, is for there to be sensible, moderate sized dairy farms, e.g. between 60 and 400, and maybe a few larger ones, e.g. up to 1000, as there are now.
Understandably, those without much farming knowledge may be led to thinking if they see loads of cows that look perfectly healthy, then everything’s hunky-dory. Actually, it probably means that a large number of cows with only minor health issues, e.g. bad feet/lameness, are destroyed to make way for new ones. Some of the time, these animals could have been treated.
The supermarkets and the government are making it almost impossible to look after these animals properly, simply because they aren’t paying the farmers enough to be able to afford it! But, all this when the consumers are apparently more and more concerned with animal welfare? This doesn’t make sense.
People don’t realise that most farmers are making a loss every financial year. Even though the majority actually work longer hours than your regular office job. Of course, this is difficult to comprehend as you often see farmers in 4 x 4’s, and surely, you think, if they’re not making any money, why are they doing it??
Well, this is because many are living off the money they made when times were good, about thirty/forty years ago, and they made a fair profit. This is the money they are having to use up now. This can only go on for so long, perhaps one generation, and then, the money will run out. They continue to farm because its all they’ve ever known, and no farmer wants to ‘give up’ and admit defeat. They would rather run themselves and their families into the ground first.
This is all very well, but unfortunately, agriculture is one of the very last primary industries left in this country. Once that has gone (and it is well on its way), there won’t be much of a need for your other industries. So much of business relies on farming, e.g. yogurt, cheese, ice-cream, butter and milk manufacture, machinery manufacturers, e.g. tractors, harvesters, implements etc, contracting businesses, feed firms, livestock markets, farm vehicle manufacturers, agricultural engineering, are just a few that instantly pop into my head. Farming is where most of the economies wealth starts from. And have you noticed as the number of farmers get less and less, the British economy gets worse and worse??
So why isn’t hasn’t the government stepped in? At a time when jobs need to be created? And the environment needs caring for? Farming is the most sustainable form of industry, in the long term, there is. And this is best done by family-sized farms, not ridiculous-sized battery farms run by greedy people with no interest in the farming side of it, just the financial. The government are actually making it hard for farmers, waiting for them to get fewer and fewer. All this is going to do is force us to import milk, and therefore lose all control of price we have to pay, and cause all sort of potential problems. Another area where the UK will be dictated to by other countries, and not have anything to export back. Great!
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