When milk prices crashed, Bryce Cunningham faced losing his family’s dairy farm. His solution was to embrace organic farming and lean on the resilience that so many Scottish entrepreneurs have in spades
Bryce Cunningham never set out to be a farmer. During childhood visits to his grandparents’ dairy farm in East Ayrshire, where they’d lived and worked since 1948, he always enjoyed a glass of milk straight from the cow. But he had “no interest whatsoever” in taking on the farm one day. So instead of following in his grandfather’s (and father’s) footsteps, he became a technician for Mercedes-Benz, spent 10 “very enjoyable” years with the company, and fully expected to remain there – until a family emergency changed the course of his life.
His father, grandfather and grandmother – the three partners in the family dairy business – all became very ill. When Cunningham returned home to help out, “I fell in love with farming a wee bit more than when I was growing up.”
Sadly his father and grandfather were ultimately diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Following the death of his father in 2014, Cunningham took over the reins of the business. But it was almost a short-lived career change.
“The same month my father died, the milk price collapsed from 27p for every litre we sold to 9p, which resulted in a loss of £100,000 over my first 6-12 months of farming.” His father had invested in upgrades to the farm – but that just added to the problems. “With huge debt and no way to repay it, our choices were to sell everything we could and stop farming – effectively just go bankrupt – or try something different.”
