Speeches

Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-09-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many dairy farmers there were in each of the last five years.

George Eustice

The number of dairy farms in England from 2011 to 2015 is shown below along with the number of cows in the dairy herd on these farms. The source of cattle population data is the administrative Cattle Tracing System (CTS) data.

Year

Number of dairy farms(a)

Number of cows in the dairy herd

2011

9 041

1 112 459

2012

8 663

1 104 676

2013

8 342

1 098 610

2014

8 092

1 128 548

2015

7 982

1 148 089

(a) Sourced from Cattle Tracing System (CTS). Defined as the number of holdings with more than 10 female dairy cows over 2 years old in the milking herd (i.e. with offspring)