The non-profit making state of the UK dairy industry was aired at the inaugural Agrihive dairy summit in London on Tuesday.

Accountant Rob Hitch explained: “Typically on farms we are seeing over 80% of the financial gains of the last six years will be wiped out this year with the very low milk price. There are serious questions that need to be asked of UK dairy farmers because many are not planning for succession, completing inadequate benchmarking, and happy to be ‘just farming’ rather than making a profit.”

Cornwall dairy farmer Pete Westenage said: “We need to start talking about the right benchmarks. So often we hear about margin over feed but for me it’s a complete nonsense figure. Why would you take out one cost from your whole business and use that as a benchmark? So many farmers don’t know the cost of production or hide the real figures.”

On a similar note, ex-HSBC Agri boss Steve Elwood said: “As an industry, the UK farming sector is behind the curve on proper business metrics and principles and the quicker they get back up to completing similar measurements to other businesses, the quicker it can rectify itself.”

Speaking in the panel session, Drew Fox from Alpha Capital Research said farmers need to look at alternative means to fund their businesses. Drew is currently marketing the Dairylend fund as an alternative funding option in Ireland and he said: “We will lend money to producers and receive returns for investors based on farm product price and yield.”

Market analyst and Irish Farmers Journal contributor Chris Walkland was the first to speak and he quickly dismissed speculation that additional Irish produce imported into the UK was to blame for low milk prices.

He estimated that imports of Irish cheddar product into the UK were more or less similar to other years.

He said: “The problem is global demand in 2014 was 1.7% and slowing, and, now dairy farmers are producing more milk so it simply makes the market worse.”

He suggested the UK dairy industry needs to stand up and fight for the home market that is being taken away by “trendy” drinks such as soymilk, almond milk, etc.

The concept of the Agrihive summit is the brainchild of Australian James Walker, who developed a similar initiative in response to the Australian drought that has crippled and is still crippling the Australian dairy industry.

He said: “Over 600 Queensland dairy farmers are completely destocked for the last three years due to the drought and it will cost $1.5m to restock these farms alone – that’s a lot of money and a serious industry challenge. Maybe the UK dairy industry isn’t so bad and has a lot going for it if good business principles were applied.”