Happy Birthday Milk Quotas - 25 Years Old

A belated happy 25th birthday to milk quotas. Introduced on Apr 2nd 1984.

When quotas were introduced we were the only country in the EEC producing less milk than we consumed (85%). Yet the UK took the biggest cut at 6.5%, sounds like a familiar story.

Created as a better way of stemming the flow of dairy farmers out of the industry than price cuts.

There were just under 40,000 dairy farmers in the UK in 1984, Now there are around 12,000.

The exodus of farmers from milking could result in Britain having to import more than half its dairy products by 2030, if current trends continues, according to DairyCo.

By then UK production would be just 7.5bn litres. In its latest survey, a further 14% of dairy farmers intended to leave the industry within two years.