DairyCo

UK Producer Numbers

Published 5 January 12

In January:

• Producer numbers for England and Wales stood at 10,733 in January, 22 (0.2%) less than in December.
• This is a fall in dairy producer numbers of 272 or 2.4% over the last 12 months.

Looking at the figures on a regional basis, the largest numerical year on year decrease was seen in the North West with producer numbers falling by 60 (2.5%) between January 2011 and January of this year. The next largest annual fall occurred in the North, where 49 producers left the industry, a decrease of 2.8%.

The region with the largest percentage decrease between January 2011 and January 2012 was the East, where producer numbers fell by 16 (9.8%) to 147.

For more information on producer numbers in individual counties, please click here.

The EU 27 has also seen the number of dairy producers fall by 10.0% between 2008/09 and 2009/10, to 1,205,133. Final data for 2010/11 is not available at present but will be published here when it becomes available. For more information on EU dairy producer numbers 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 Food Standards Agency 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 Food Standards Agency figures represent the number processed forms received each month. Due to time lags in processing the forms or time lags in farmers informing the Food Standards Agency 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.

Producer Numbers England & Wales

Source: Food Standards Agency

Producer Numbers by Region

Source: Food Standards Agency