A FAMILY-RUN dairy farm in Whitchurch is to sell raw milk directly to the public, starting this Sunday.

The initiative comes as a result of the fall in the wholesale price for the milk Mark and Jenny Stevens sell to farm co-operative Arla. The couple run Peak House Farm, at Cole Henley, home to a where they have a herd of 100 mainly Holsteins, British Friesians, crossed with Brown Swiss and Swedish Red cows.

They will be selling the milk from a self service vending machine on the farm now that the 140acre farm has a licence from the Food Standards Agency to sell unpasteurised milk – otherwise known as raw milk.

Mr Stevens said: “We embarked on the idea a year ago before the milk price was anything like as low as it is now.

“At the moment we receive about 22.8 pence per litre, but it costs us around 28 pence to produce a litre of milk.

“So we’re doing this to primarily add some value to the milk we produce.

“It’s a case of doing what you can – in the long term that milk price is not sustainable for the dairy industry.”

The falling price of milk has led to mass protests by dairy farmers, with some taking cows into supermarkets to make their point.

Although not overly critical of Arla, which Mr Stevens describes as better than most dairy wholesalers, he said it is trading in a global market where there is an oversupply of milk, made worse by the Russian trade embargo on European milk.

But he is critical of supermarkets using milk as loss leaders.

Mr Stevens said: “There is this intense competition between the retailers – they could agree amongst themselves that they won’t drop below a certain level – but it seems like it’s a race to the bottom price.

“Dairy farming is such a long term business, whereas in retailing they are more interested in the here and now.”

Mr Stevens said the initial outlay for the vending service, including the vending machine imported from Italy and building work to house the equipment, has cost the business around £15,000.

“This is very much a niche market,” said Mr Stevens, “but we feel there is sufficient interest in raw milk.”

Mr Stevens said the vending service ticks a lot of green boxes, in terms of food miles and having a low carbon footprint, especially with people keen to support local businesses and the fact that they reuse their glass raw milk bottles, which can be purchased at the farm for £1.

Mrs Stevens, is looking forward to the raw milk launch event on Sunday, which will run from 3pm to 6pm.

Visitors can watch cows being milked, meet the herd and enjoy some cream teas and learn about the health benefits of raw milk.

“Raw milk from our farm is in its most natural state as nature intended, with nothing added and nothing taken away,” said Mrs Stevens.

“It contains only four per cent fat and it’s unrecognisable to that on supermarket shelves, where the process it goes through from farmyard to shop shelf,changes its chemical make-up completely from something with some mainly good health benefits to something lacking in lots of the nutrients and benefits it started out with.”

To find out more about raw milk visit peakhousefarm.co.uk/ and to book a place for the launch event call 07796 207538.