Seeing for ourselves the future of dairy

Last month we went to visit Woody’s Legend Dairy where Lucy & Robert Noad are the fourth generation to farm at Woodhouse Farm in Semington, Wiltshire, and they are transforming the way that they do business.

Here’s what we have discovered about this month’s “Susty Food Hero”

Who: Woodhouse Farm

What: Dairy

Where: Semington, Wiltshire 

When: since 1900

How big: 1.6 million litres of milk each year

History

Rob and Lucy Noad are the fourth generation of the Noad family to care for Woodhouse Farm. This family relationship began at the start of the last century, and next year will be the centenary for the family taking ownership of the land. 

Engaging the community about regenerative methods

At last month’s open farm for the Festival of Regenerative Farming, run by First MIlk, they proudly showed off some of the regenerative methods they use to produce milk on their 500 acre Wiltshire farm. Their milking herd of 200 cows graze outside for a minimum of six months each year in multi-species leys and the plan is to reach 60% milk from homegrown forage next year. 

On our first-hand visit, with a lot of other local families, we saw their significant investments in buildings and equipment and their hard work to reduce the chemical inputs to the farm. Lucy & Robert plan to move to zero chemical sprays and zero bought-in fertiliser from this autumn; their farm is experimenting with significant tree-planting for silvopasture as well as planting new hedgerows and creating wide wildflower field margins.

Lee Truelove, Head of Regenerative Farming at First Milk gave a hands-on demonstration in the health of the pasture as we counted dung beetles in the cow pats - regenerative methods consider biodiversity, water quality and social responsibility together - and dung beetles are a great indicator of farm health; “the most impactful thing you can do on a farm is rotation and increased grazing and the second is to increase the diversity of grassland,” he said.

It’s really important to reconnect with the source of our food and to appreciate the effort that goes into looking after the land and keeping us fed.

First Milk measuring what they manage

First Milk is a dairy cooperative owned by British farmers, it’s also a Cert B Corp that believes that dairy can be a force for good. As part of First Milk, farmers are paid not just for the number of litres of milk they produce, but also for the other things the farm is achieving, encouraging farmers to be socially, ethically and financially viable.

As a Cert B Corp, First Milk includes information on progress with its impact on people and planet as well as profit in its latest annual report published on 29th August. In the report, Chris Thomas, Chairman says that “It is increasingly clear that consumers, and the retailers that serve them, are more and more focused on the impact of food production on nature and biodiversity, animal welfare and climate change”... “our regenerative agriculture programme is at the heart of our response to these challenges and is becoming more and more important in our commercial discussions with our customers”.

Which is why farmers like the Noads also receive practical support from First Milk on their regenerative journey. In 2021, working with agritech firm Agricarbon, First Milk established a baseline analysis from more than 100,000 soil samples from across its members farms. Support like this is the reason First MIlk are one of 15 UK businesses to be recognised with the King’s Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development in 2023; and now farmers are keeping a diary of the way that they are farming their land, field by field ready for the next round of measurements that will establish the impact of regenerative farming practices on soil health. Until the results are in, we’ll have to be content with counting dung beetles.  

Serving farm milk fresh from a vending station 

It’s also important to put profit on an equal footing with people and planet and at their open day, Woodhouse Farm launched a new commercial venture. A new bright orange Golden Hooves vending station joins hundreds of other on-farm machines offering milk fresh from the farm. As well as Woodhouse Farm milk, there are free range eggs and Golden Hooves cheese made from regeneratively farmed milk and local condiments from Wiltshire Chilli Farm and The Slow Vinegar Company; try the smoked cheddar from Wiltshire Smokehouse! 

The franchised milk vending machine is as much about communication as commerce because it joins together customers and producers in the story of how modern farming is evolving to do more good, increasing output and resilience at the same time as increasing soil health. 

Farming as a force for good

Lucy and Robert Noad are great examples of farmers building on their heritage and embracing the next generation of farming. Recognising the importance of their stakeholders they are engaging with the local and business community to build a more resilient business that welcomes families and reconnects them to food and farming. They are taking practical, incremental steps that make their working methods more regenerative and evolving what they do to work in their own farm setting. In return it’s our job to support what they are trying to do by sharing the good news about British farming. 

Like Chris Thomas, we believe that we should all be more connected to the impact of food production on nature and biodiversity, animal welfare and climate change and that the best way to do that is to reconnect with our food and farming producers so why don’t you take time out to visit a farm or farm shop or try out your nearest milk vending machine?