THE passion and determination of those still holding on to dairies make the recent cuts to milk prices raw and desperately sad.

The countryside offers so much enjoyment for all ages. It creates jobs, offers sanctuary and respite, provides picturesque fitness routes and rambles and develops lifelong passions through its flora and fauna.

Most people will have something they really enjoy or love about the countryside.

My father, despite being forced out of dairy farming a decade ago by rising, unrealistic quotas and regulations, was determined to keep seeing cows on our farm as they have roamed our fields for as long as he can remember.

I should mention at this point that that my father is allergic to cattle as he contracted Q fever many years ago, an incapacitating disease contracted from years of calving cattle, but he could not be deterred from keeping cows in Farley.

It is passions like his and the determination of those still holding on to dairies that makes the recent cuts to milk prices so raw and desperately sad for farmers still fighting for survival and to keep their animals.

From February 1, the British dairy companies Dairy Crest and First Milk slashed a further 1.2ppl and 1.6ppl off the farmgate price of milk, which will result in the ruin of more dairy farmers and our proud industry.

NFU president Meurig Raymond announced that dairy farmer numbers are at their all-time low, with 60 going out of business in November alone.

I remember our dairy, I remember my father getting up at 3am and working in the dark and cold, without a break or a holiday (he hasn’t left the country since I was six) and always with the attitude that the cows are sorted before the humans.

When he couldn’t continue, my sister took on the mantle and worked her weekends, bank holidays and Christmases to help to try save our dairy, but to no avail. This wasn’t just the loss of a business but meant that more than 100 animals which had been cared for, protected and tended to for years had to leave us.

At a time when Fair Trade is on the rise for other kitchen staples such as coffee and cocoa it is remarkable that we in Wiltshire are not being offered a fair trade, especially as our trade has living dependents.

There is a wonderful British movement happening, with knowledge and understanding of the benefits of farmgate-to-plate ever increasing – except where milk is concerned.

Perhaps it is too available, thanks to imports. Perhaps people don’t mind or notice prices going up a couple of pence at a time, but it does not make sense why such a staple should be costing more for consumers yet producers are being paid less, a lot less, in fact less than the cost of production.

Not many industries would accept that, not many industries could survive that, yet the farmers, the guardians and protectors of pleasant pastures are forced to squeeze a livelihood for their families and their herds.

All I ask for 2015 is that the public continues to back British products, including British dairy, and look out for the Red Tractor logo for food and welfare assurances. The absence of our green and pleasant pastures lost to imported, low-welfare, treated milk is unfathomable.