Led by Amanda Sullivan, the team of nine is the Co-op’s in-house support team focused specifically on Milk Quality issues. The team works alongside the Farm Source Service Centre, which offers 24/7 support via phone: 0800 65 65 68.
“We’re all focused on securing great quality milk for both the individual farming businesses and the Co-op as a whole,” Amanda says.
“The On Farm Excellence Advisory team partners with the Milk Quality Managers and wider field teams as well as external stakeholders, quality controllers, veterinarians, chemical representatives – everyone that plays a role in our milk quality. Each region has a dedicated advisor who either have past or current farming experience so they understand the challenges facing farmers.”
The Co-op’s Milk Quality Support Model is central to the team’s work. If a farm receives a ‘downgrade’, the On Farm Excellence Advisory team will be notified and will work with the farm to identify and resolve what’s happening.
“We connect straight away with the farmers rather than waiting for them to contact us. We prefer to have a direct phone conversation – rather than email – so we can capture the information quickly and resolve it. Farming is a complex business, we know a lot of the time the farmers will be in the milking shed or juggling many on farm jobs and don’t necessarily have a lot of time, so we focus on making it as quick as possible for them. Sometimes we’ll be able to resolve an issue over one call.”
The team also deals with day-to-day inquiries from farmers seeking milk quality support.
“The number of milk quality assistance cases are a drop in the ocean when you think about the number of collections the Co-op has each season and the amount of milk our farmers are supplying. As a business, it shows that our farmers are doing great work producing high quality milk but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to keep working to improve the experience farmers have in achieving this,” Amanda says.
In addition to the 0800 service, Co-op farmers have a suite of self-help support at their disposal with food safety and dairy practising fact sheets available online and in Farm Source stores.
Farmers can also book milk quality improvement visits – a free service whereby Farm Source experts observe a farm’s milking operation and work through improvements with the farmer in person. In addition we have recently launched on farm training sessions focusing on best practice in the shed, which is a really good way to pro-actively approach the quality of milk being produced on farm.
Visit your local Farm Source store or call 0800 65 65 68 to find out more about Farm Source’s milk quality support services.