Last month's Women in Dairy Conference was a stonking success! The passion in the room was something to behold, with a sense of camaraderie among members. A talk from Fran Edmunds, Head of Animal Welfare Schemes and Labelling at Defra, about the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway created a lot of discussion, with delegates keen to know more about future funding.
Fran set out details of the pathway, explaining that the prioritises for dairy would lie in BVD control, lameness, mastitis, upgrading housing, and improving welfare at pasture.
Leading Psychologist Hannah Vickery also entertained the room in her team motivation workshop. She imparted some valuable knowledge on how to motivate staff, make changes in small teams and examples of approaching challenging conversations. All the news from the conference, including information on the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway, can be found at www.womenindairy.co.uk
The future of the Environment Land Management Scheme (ELMS) has been widely reported in the press. Defra has since re-enforced its commitment to the environment alongside food production and has confirmed they are not scraping reforms and is committed to its schemes.
Helping farmers during this transition is essential, and it's something we will be focussing on quite heavily at next year's Dairy-Tech on 1 February. With such media reports comes uncertainty, perhaps, halting farmer plans to make any changes. We hope to have some more details on the rollout of ELMS come next year and to be able to offer practical guidance on how you can transition to the new incentive schemes as painlessly as possible.
As I write, the Entrepreneurs in Dairying (EID) programme has just started. Now in its ninth year, the course has gone from strength to strength, with this year seeing our highest intake to date. This is encouraging for the future of the dairy sector and labour shortages, as EID provides students with the contacts and connections to go on and establish their own businesses, whether it be share partnerships, joint ventures, tenancies, or the development of their existing businesses. We hope all the delegates have an informative and enjoyable time.
As we head into the winter months and doom and gloom continue to dominate the media, we must remain positive and remind ourselves how lucky we are to work in UK dairy. We need more of the camaraderie and positivity witnessed at the Women in Dairy Conference filtering through to the rest of the sector.
On another positive, we all gain an extra hour in bed from the end of this month!
Take care and have a great month,
Matt