The local link to your latte – how one popular coffee brand benefits from British milk

“I love mornings,” says 36-year-old dairy farmer Jonny Slack of Dolphenby Farm in Cumbria, where he looks after some 500 cows.

“On a normal day, it’s a five o’clock start, and the first job is always to milk the cows and make sure they’re all fed and happy. That takes until about 8am, and then we’ll go and grab some breakfast.”

Dolphenby supplies milk for Nestlé’s Nescafé range of frothy coffees, which are produced just 20 miles down the road at its Dalston factory.

The secret to helping cows produce high-quality milk lies in high-quality grass and soil, Jonny explains.

“One thing we’re really good at in Cumbria is growing grass, and we let our cows graze on it for as long in the year as we can.”

Jonny and his co-manager on the farm, Robert Craig, credit much of their success to their 21-year relationship with Nestlé and First Milk, a British farmer-owned dairy co-operative.

“The relationship between First Milk and Nestlé is unique,” says Robert. “It’s a real partnership, and it’s really well funded. They have been helping us to move in a regenerative direction.”

Robert explains that, in recent years, Dolphenby has been especially focused on soil health and the biodiversity in it, relying less on chemical fertilisers.

“I think regenerative farming is so important,” adds Jonny. “The whole cycle is important to us – farming alongside nature, looking after the soil, which then looks after the cows and looks after the people.

“The cows have been here on and off for hundreds of years. They’ve shaped the local landscape, really.

“We talk about locally produced food. Well, here, we’re locally producing food for our cows to locally produce milk for the nation.”

While Robert comes from a long line of farmers (“I’m probably the