Wales Statistics

Wales Producer Numbers

Wales Dairy Cow Numbers

Wales Producer Numbers

Published 15 July 10

Wales Dairy Producer Numbers

Latest producer number figures for Wales show that there were 1,985 dairy farmers in June, a fall of 8 producers compared to May. This is also a fall of 119 (5.7%) when compared to June 2009. The area which saw the largest exit of producers was in Dyfed, where 73 dairy farmers have ceased production in the last year, although the largest relative decline occurred in West Glamorgan, which saw 11.1% 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 June 2010. 

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

 Wales Dairy Cow Numbers

Published 29 January 10

• Dairy cow numbers in Wales fell between 2008 and 2009, there are now 221,236 dairy cows in Wales, a fall of 2.5%.
• The number of dairy cows in Wales has fallen by 19.9% (55,074) in the last ten years.

The number of dairy cows in Wales fell by 2.5% between 2008 and 2009 to 221,236.

The number of dairy cows has fallen consistently over the last seven years, with a fall of 50,347 cows (18.5%). There was a slight rise in Welsh cow numbers between 2001 and 2002, rising by 2.4% (6,277), before the continual year-on-year falls began.