A small family-run dairy farm in Ayrshire has won a major award at the annual BBC Food and Farming celebrations.
On the lands once worked by poet Robert Burns, a young farmer launched a radical bid to secure a future in dairy farming – and it has caused quite a milk shake-up.
Mossgiel Milk, an organic dairy farm near Mauchline, won the BBC's 'Future Food Award' for its innovative approach to farming.
The farm's milk is not homogenised, meaning the cream will settle at the top of the bottle – something many younger customers will never have tasted.
Another major unique selling point for the farm is the fact that it doesn't use single-use plastics.
Bryce Cunningham, the third generation to run the business, told BBC Radio 4's Farming Today he was pleased with winning the award.
Once faced with paltry milk prices, he was staring down the barrel of being forced to quit his family farm.
He told the programme: “We lost so much money in my first year of farming after my father Robert's death that I felt we had to do something different to what we were doing.
“I started to think the consumer today has no connection to the farm or where the food comes from.
“Then I was thinking about single use plastics and how we had the solution 50 years ago with bottles, there is a drive behind this and I thought there was an opportunity there.”
He added: “It was a massive step but our local community was behind it and we launched two crowd funders which were really successful and we are now in a position to support two other local organic farmers who were in the same position as us five years ago by simply being in the wrong milk contract.”
