Dairy farmers have warned that a long-running shortage of workers, exacerbated by Brexit and the pandemic, has put the UK’s food security under pressure.
Five in six farmers who have looked for workers said they have received very few or zero applications from qualified people for their job vacancies, according to a survey of dairy producers by Arla, the UK’s largest dairy cooperative and the owner of the Lurpak and Cravendale brands.
The fifth annual poll of Arla’s 1,900 British dairy farmers has highlighted the worsening struggle to find workers with the right skills and experience, with 79% of farmers highlighting this problem in 2021, rising to 84% this year.
The difficulties in hiring staff had grown worse since Brexit and the pandemic, milk producers reported, as the combination of the end of free movement for EU workers and other economic factors since Covid have made it harder to find suitable staff, while there has been a similar story across the whole of the agricultural sector.
Nearly half (48.6%) of those surveyed said it was now harder to retain staff than it was before Brexit and the pandemic, while only 5% said the situation had improved.
More than one in 10 (13%) respondents said they would leave farming altogether in the next 12 months if there was no improvement in labour shortages, and 6% said they had been forced to cut the amount of milk they produced.
Arla itself has seen a reduction in milk producers over the past few years, although production volumes have remained constant. Its membership has fallen by about 300, from 2,100 three years ago, as farmers have retired or through consolidation of farms, amid a trend for keeping larger herds. Arla members represent almost a third of all UK dairy farmers.
Nearly 200 British dairy farmers quit the industry over the 12 months to April 2025, according to the most recent figures from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), taking the total number of producers to 7,040.
The industry has been warning for some time that a continued exodus of dairy farmers could jeopardise the UK’s current self-sufficiency in liquid milk.
“What we’re seeing is the real impact of these workforce shortages on our farming industry, whether that’s in higher costs or lower milk production,” said Bas Padberg, managing director of Arla Foods UK.
“The effect of this is ultimately going to be seen in the price and availability of products on the supermarket shelves, affecting the millions of people that rely on dairy as a source of nutrition in their diet.”
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Arla – which, like other companies, runs its own apprenticeship schemes as well as industrial placements – said the government had acknowledged the ongoing difficulties with recruiting staff, and welcomed the focus on talent and development as part of the upcoming food strategy.
However, Padberg called for “practical steps that the industry, the education sector and government can take together” to attract more people, especially younger workers, to the dairy sector.
Dairy, like much of the rest of agriculture, has an ageing workforce and nearly half (47%) of farmers are aged 55 and over. Younger workers are most likely to enter the industry if it is in the family: two-thirds (66%) of farmers said their farms had been passed down at least four generations, while only 3% of respondents said they were first-generation.
