Nocton Dairies: Two sides to the question

We all want electricity, but no one wants a nuclear power station next door.  We all want mobile phones, but no one wants a phone mast nearby.  We all want cheap holidays on the Mediterranean, but no one wants a new airport.  And we all want cheap milk (so the supermarkets tell us), but it seems we don’t like dairies either.
 
I always and instinctively sympathise with constituents who are concerned about proposed new industrial or housing developments near their homes – perhaps not least because a wind farm company was recently granted planning permission for a site within a mile of my Leicestershire home, and frankly I’m hopping mad about it.  So when I received some letters from concerned folk in the villages of Nocton and Potter Hanworth in Lincolnshire regarding a proposed new dairy farm, I knew I had to pay attention, and I made an appointment to visit Nocton Dairies Ltd on the proposed site.
 
The company is applying for planning permission for an 8000 cow unit.  That’s exceptionally big for the UK, and quite large by global standards, though there are a number of similar sized dairy farms in the US.  So I quite understand the worries of the local residents, which include visual intrusion, smell, traffic levels and animal welfare.
 
The company has around 2500 acres for its project, but is forming agreements with neighbouring farmers for supply of animal feed and the spreading of manure.  In many ways this is a text-book example of sustainability and recycling.  The feed will literally come from adjacent fields, with the absolute minimum of transport.  Effluent from the cows will go straight into an anaerobic digester on-site, generating renewable energy, and the residue, or “digestate”, will then be piped – not trucked – straight back to the same fields as fertiliser.  The company is also looking at a photovoltaic installation on the extensive roof areas.
 
On the visual intrusion question, I stood on the proposed site and could not see the villages, so it does not seem a major problem.  The anaerobic digester should solve any potential odour problem – the digestate has little odour.  And the local cattle-feed supplies, and piping of digestate to adjacent fields, will minimise traffic.  There will of course be some additional traffic, notably of milk in tankers, but this is estimated to increase traffic on the nearest main road, the B1190, by only around 1%.  There is particular concern about possible traffic through the villages themselves.  But both villages lie to the south of the B1190, while the dairy will be to the north, so no dairy traffic will need to pass through the villages at all.
 
Then there is the question of animal welfare.  It is true that in very large dairy units in the USA, while there are examples of best practice, there are also some rather poor older operations.  The company has been studying large units in the US, and insists (perhaps not surprisingly) that it is determined to emulate best practice. 
 
There are complaints that the cows will spend a lot of time indoors.  But this applies to all dairy farms.  You see very few cows in the fields in the winter, because there’s no grass for them.  A recent report for the RSPCA, by John Avizienius was entitled: “Why big dairies are not necessarily bad” – although it is fair to say that he attracted the opprobrium of the ideologues at the RSPCA, who regard all large-scale farming as evil in principle.
 
All industries are looking for economies of scale, and this applies equally to the dairy industry.  If we want a successful agricultural sector in Britain, we have to let our farmers compete, or even more of our food will be imported.
 
Of course in talking to the company, I may have heard only one side of the story, and I remain open to the arguments of objectors.  But we have here a project which will invest £50 million in the local economy, and will employ 80 people full-time.  Lincolnshire – and Britain – needs jobs and investment.  So subject to all the usual caveats about planning and environmental standards, I believe that this proposal deserves careful and positive consideration.