Disrupting dairy: How one former cow farm successfully shifted to oat milk production
Can oat milk production really disrupt dairy and provide a viable alternative to animal farming? Jenny Di Leo and Tati von Rheinbaben from Refarm’d talk us through the latest news from Jay and Katja Wilde of Bradley Nook Farm.
British farmers Jay and Katja Wilde made national headlines a few years ago when they decided to give up livestock farming, and much has been made of their transition as a case study for real and meaningful change.
This was a monumental decision for them. The family farm – Bradley Nook Farm in Ashbourne, Derbyshire – had shifted from conventional dairy to producing organic beef in 1997 before Jay inherited it in 2011. But six years later, Jay reached a point where he could no longer bear taking the cows to slaughter – cows he’d come to recognise as sentient individuals.
With the help of The Vegan Society's Grow Green campaign and the Vegan Organic Network, the Wildes rehomed a large part of their herd to Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk and started the process of transitioning to planting crops. Their story was the subject of filmmaker Alex Lockwood's BAFTA-winning documentary 73 Cows.
That caught the attention of Geraldine Starke, founder of the startup Refarm’d, which assists dairy farmers in shifting to plant-based milk production. Refarm’d provides farmers with the equipment, training, logistics, marketing, and ongoing support for producing their own oat milk. The ingredients are organic and sourced locally; the oat milk comes in reusable, returnable glass bottles.
“We were impressed with the concept as it doesn’t condemn farmers, but allows them to make a living while being able to gradually change their daily routine, the management of their land and their attitude towards animals, farming and themselves,” said Jay.
Fast forward to December 2020, and Jay and Katja have just launched their own organic oat milk in the Midlands region of the UK.
Jay and Katja Wilde at Bradley Nook Farm
What can be learned from this transition and the growing “farm shift” movement?
It is important to keep in mind that Refarm’d is a young startup. The small team plus the dedicated volunteers have a lot of work to manage, and some key questions to answer: How can the oat milk making machinery be improved? What ingredients can we find locally for the new recipes? What is the best way to transport the milk? Who are the key customers to approach, at least at the beginning? Plus many more. However, by working closely with Bradley Nook Farm and others, and by learning together as with any working relationship, every question answered adds to a comprehensive yet adaptable model that we can take to other farms.
At the moment, Refarm’d is working on improving and streamlining the whole model and oat milk production before actively engaging with new farms. Currently, Refarm’d’s approach works best on small farms, but it can be scaled up with some time and adjustments.
The farmers have also started sharing with the team some of the life struggles they face. This includes managing all their work and projects in a timely manner and filling out the paperwork for all their projects, such as organic certification applications and food safety sheets. Without any real background in the agricultural world, Refarm’d relies on the intelligence we gain from farmers and other experts they contact to learn how to be as supportive as possible. It often feels like taking an introductory but intense course in farm management.
Regarding the social aspect of shifting from beef and dairy to oat milk production and plant-based farming, the farmers have received mixed reactions. Some neighbouring farmers have been quite supportive and shown genuine interest in the oat milk production process, while other neighbours have been sceptical of the changes.
How disruptive is Refarm’d to the dairy industry?
Because Refarm’d is only working with small-scale farmers for the moment, the company is not yet helping the biggest polluters and most harmful farms, those being the large-scale factory farms. On these farms, a shift will be a lot more challenging – but doable nonetheless. Rather than disruptive, perhaps the fact that dairy farms can become oat milk producers is more about bringing back the tradition of the milkman delivering fresh milk around town, just in this case it is oat milk.
The whole idea of turning dairy farms into oat milk is to help farmers shift within the industry to more sustainable, cruelty-free production practices, while at the same time also bringing in more income than would have dairy. The whole “farm shift” movement, Refarm’d included, is not about going against cow and dairy farmers, but rather about working with the farmers to help them shift in a way that benefits everybody.
The farm-shift movement is still in its infancy, but startups like Refarm’d are pioneering models that actually work to make transitioning a reality for farmers who are facing up to the truth. No model is perfect, and every case is different, but these projects are uniquely adaptable thanks to small and dynamic teams willing to learn from the farmers themselves in a two-way process. Animal agriculture is unsustainable, whether it is the large-scale intensive facilities polluting our countryside, or the small family-run farms, also detrimental to the environment, but at the mercy of supermarkets and barely subsisting on government hand-outs. Shifting and diversifying is the only way farmers can ever hope to continue being the custodians of the land that they claim to be, making a living from the country as generations have done before them.
Oat milk is just one alternative for farmers to transition towards. For more ideas, check out the Surge Milk This Is Your Moment Campaign and download the ‘farmer pack’. Though more applicable to UK farms, this pack can be used as a guide for farmers in other countries who want to shift and would like to find similar options. Surge is working on more farmer packs for other countries at the moment.
Bradley Nook Farm oat milk in partnership with Refarm'd
Jenny Di Leo has a background in Earth Sciences. While working as a researcher, she went vegan due to ethical and environmental concerns and decided to shift her career as well. She has been working in the vegan/animal-rights space for over six years now, having previously worked at Viva!, vanilla bean, and Million Dollar Vegan before joining the Refarm’d team.
Tatiana von Rheinbaben is a global citizen who finished her master's degree in environmental engineering and science at Stanford University in June 2018, after having studied molecular biology (B.S.) at the University of California, San Diego. After an internship at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and an internship at The Not Company in Chile, Tatiana started working for Surge and for Refarm'd, a startup helping farmers transition from animal agriculture to plant-based milk production and stock-free farming.
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