Lockdown leads to rise in farmers taking control and selling milk direct
The National Farmers' Union in the South West says it supports the increasing trend of farmers cutting out supermarkets and selling milk direct to consumers.
In recent months milk dispensers have increasingly appeared at farms and in shops, where people can access a milk bottle to reuse and buy milk direct from the supplier.
Rex Fisher is from Hollis Mead Organic Dairy, based near Beaminster, which supplies milk within a 40 mile range across Dorset, Somerset and Devon.
During lockdown the company started only selling milk direct, and he said: "We’re a brand new farm, selling milk out of vending machines across west Dorset and Somerset, and the biggest of our kind in the south west.
"We already have a machine just outside Yeovil on the A37, but we’re about to open our ninth and tenth machines in Yeovil and East Coker.
"If you're a local farmer and you're selling milk to big supermarket your milk will be selling at about 26p a litre give or take.
"For us the difference is we sell directly to the public, we sell our milk at £1.50 a litre.
"The benefit of that for us is we can do things like lay hedges, look after conservation.
"Our farm in particular, we've laid over 10 miles of indigenous hedgerows which encourage bug life, bird life, plant like, hares, deer, dormic, the works.
"The problem with farming right now, we're in a situation where farming is forcing itself into the ground.
David George is from the South West branch of the National Farmers' Union
"People are wanting cheaper and cheaper food, to pay less and less for it and the result is our local environment, out natural habitat in this country is being completely destroyed."
David George, from the South West National Farmers' Union, said he supported farmers taking control, although adds that he doesn't feel the volumes of milk sales is close to that achieved by supermarkets - but hopes the trend for direct selling continues to grow.