DairyCo

Wales Producer Numbers

Published 10 September 10

Wales Dairy Producer Numbers

• Welsh dairy producer numbers continue to fall, declining by 5.7% over the past year.
• The number of dairy producers in Wales stood at 1,974 in August 2010, 5 fewer than in the previous month.

Latest producer number figures for Wales show that there were 1,974 dairy farmers in August, a fall of 5 producers compared to July. This is also a fall of 119 (5.7%) when compared to August 2009. The area which saw the largest exit of producers was in Dyfed, where 70 dairy farmers have ceased production in the last year, although the largest relative decline occurred in Gwent, which saw 11.3% of its dairy farmers leave the industry.

The rate of decline in Welsh producers is higher than the 3.8% decrease in the number of English producers for the year ending August 2010.

For more information on English producer numbers, please click here.

Please note: figures include buffalo, goat and sheeps' milk producers as well as cows milk producers. Any producer selling milk for human consumption needs to be registered with the DHI and this covers a range of possibilities from someone with 1 goat to 1000 plus dairy cows. Therefore any increase seen in the numbers should not necessarily be interpreted as an increase in the number of commercial dairy farmers.

It must be taken into account that DHI figures represent the number processed forms received each month. Due to time lags in processing the forms or time lags in farmers informing the DHI that they have stopped producing, these figures may not provide an exact representation of the number of farmers that have ceased producing milk in a particular month.

Farmer Numbers in Wales

   Source: DHI