If you’ve been grazing the media this week, it’s been a big week for Cows in more ways than one.

We’re looking out of the window to the grey skies, watching people run for cover from the rain and listening to the rumble of the thunder in the distance. We can’t help but think of all the sailors taking part in Cowes Week. As one of the longest running sporting events, Cowes Week is the biggest regattas, of its kind, in the world. There are approximately 40 races per day and over 1,000 boats take part in this internationally renowned event. Up to 8,000 sailors race every day in the Solent waters off Cowes on the Isle of Wight. However, it’s not just sailors who travel to the island to soak up the atmosphere on the island. It’s open to everyone, from amateurs to top pros and everyone in between. Even if racing doesn’t float your boat, there is so much entertainment laid on that it’s worth going just to enjoy some of the different social activities, nautical or otherwise. You will find bars, eateries and street theatre and various other open air entertainment all staged as part of Cowes week, but also gift shops, galleries, pubs and restaurants that are a permanent fixture in Cowes that you might not ordinarily visit. There is a carnival type of atmosphere and well worth the trip across the water. At the end of the week, of course is the final firework display. Always quite a spectacle, especially if you are aboard a boat on the water to view it…and of course if you can see the fireworks through the clouds.

A big week for the nautical lovers, however, it’s not all plain sailing for our bovine friends and their farmers who are making a stand. Large supermarkets lowering the price of certain goods, you would think would be a great thing? Not when the price of the item is so low that the share of the cost going to the farmers who are providing the milk is less than what it costs them to produce it in the first place. A decision which means that a lot of farmers are facing ‘financial devastation’.

The farmers have had enough and we can understand why. Farming is one or our oldest industries and it’s a cultural tradition that we are proud of. If we actually stopped to think about the process behind how items get to the shelves in the first place, we’d be quite surprised. We rely on these processes and probably take advantage of how easy it is to pick up a pint of milk whenever we need it; it’s a vital part of most of our daily lives. However, it’s costing them more money to breed, nurture and cultivate the cows in order to produce the milk that is supplied to the shops and ultimately lands on our bowl of cereal in the morning. According to the dairy farmers, they need at least 30p per litre of milk in order to just cover their costs, but are receiving just 23.66p. It’s udder madness!

The farmers are struggling to survive within their industry and in my opinion, we should be doing what we can to support them.

We could chew the cud on this for hours. Some people may say that if the farmers were running a successful business they should be able to make it work, whatever the money was from the supermarkets. Others would argue that the supermarkets make so much money elsewhere, they can afford to raise the price of a pint of milk and pay the farmers a fair proportion without it impacting too much on their own profits. From where I’m sitting, the general consensus is that, actually, if it means keeping the dairy farms going, we wouldn’t mind paying a bit more for our milk.

There have been protests and discussions with various boards but it looks like this could rumble on for a while yet.

We wanted to talk to some cows to see what their opinion was on the matter, but they weren’t in the mooood.