ARCHIVE: Milk
A range of information on the UK dairy industry is available from Defra and other organisations. The information is used in the UK and EU to monitor the UK dairy market and to inform policy-makers' decisions concerning the dairy industry.
Defra collects monthly statistics on farm-gate milk prices and on the use of milk by dairies in England and Wales. This is combined with similar information from Scotland and Northern Ireland to produce figures for the UK as a whole. The information on milk usage is used to estimate UK production of liquid drinking milk and milk products such as cheese, butter and milk powders. Production and overseas trade are brought together in the milk product supplies dataset. This provides information on how much butter, cheese, cream, condensed milk and milk powders is available for use in the UK, and gives a measure of UK self-sufficiency for these products.
The farm-gate prices are used alongside information collected by the RPA for quota purposes to estimate the value of milk produced on farm. These figures are published annually in Defra's Agriculture in the United Kigdom report. Other information on the economic performance of the dairy farms in England is available from Defra's Farm Business Survey.
The RPA collects information, for quota purposes, on the volume of UK milk delivered to dairies each month, and the average butterfat content of that milk. Defra uses the RPA information and information from the Defra milk prices survey to also calculate the average protein content of that milk.
For information on cattle populations please see the June and December Survey pages.
DairyCo, a levy-funded, not-for-profit organisation, also publishes a wide range of dairy statistics on their Datum website. All EU member states are required to supply dairy statistics to the EU, some of which are published on the Eurostat website.
Page last modified: 24 March, 2011
Page published: 18 March, 2010