Milk Matters

In a world where taking care of our planet is becoming ever increasingly important – it’s really easy for businesses to make bold claims about their environmental credentials but, in reality, many are just scraping the surface. Sure, we can minimise single use plastics, recycle and reuse where possible, reduce our carbon footprint, all of which is great, but it doesn’t need to stop there, and we are determined to keep digging deep to ensure we cover as many bases as possible when it comes to White Feather doing our bit for the environment.

For this reason, we were super excited to be approached by Golden Hooves and subsequently partner with them to bring regenerative milk to the masses!

What is Regenerative Agriculture?

Let’s be clear – we do coffee, flippin’ great coffee, so, as much as we have a real interest in agriculture and it’s impact on the high quality produce we’re fortunate enough to sell to our customers, we are far from experts on the matter. Therefore, it only seems right to pass this one over to our friends at First Milk who have some excellent information on their website. But, we feel this is a brilliant summary: 

“Regenerative farming is an agricultural system which has a positive impact on the world we live in whilst producing nutritious food. The key word here is ‘positive’ – we aren’t trying to be ‘less bad’ we want to do good things as well as producing great food….For us, regenerative farming is about grazing-based dairy production, where cows have access to pasture and where our farmers follow five regenerative principles.” Those five principals are:

1. Protecting soil surface

2. Maintaining living roots

3. Encouraging plant diversity

4. Minimising soil disturbance

5. Livestock integration

The First Milk website is well worth a visit to discover more.

Who are Golden Hooves?

The name ‘Golden Hooves‘ comes from the action of their cows’ hooves treading organic matter into the soil as they graze the land, which improves the quality of soil and helps lock carbon away. (As you’ll have read above – Livestock integration is one of the 5 key principles of regenerative farming as without them, this action can’t be done). They are B-Corp Certified and received the King’s Award for Enterprise for Sustainability recognising their commitment to planet, animals and people 

Golden Hooves have taught us so much about regeneration. They believe that there are three pillars of regeneration; the planet, animals and people; and that the key benefits of regeneration are; high standards of animal welfare, locking carbon away in the soil and increasing biodiversity. They are really passionate about pushing the message that “regenerative” is not just a buzzword, as they have scientific data and evidence to back their claims up.

Why have we switched to Regenerative Milk?

Well…why wouldn’t we?! Of course, there would be nothing wrong with simply selecting a local farm and dairy, keeping our carbon footprint low and supporting the local supply chain, but why not go the additional mile and tick all of those glorious additional green boxes? Plus, we think all of this earthy goodness is significantly reflected in the quality of the milk, and subsequently makes our flippin’ great coffee even better than it already was!

So next time your passing through our Bath Spa Railway Station site – swing by and give it a try!