A dairy farming family from Carmarthenshire have highlighted the important role family farms play in keeping the rural economy alive, whilst producing nutritious food and looking after the environment.

Gareth Beynon Thomas, who farms Goitre Fach, Hendy, Pontarddulais, with his wife Monica and family, opened the gates to the home farm on the eve of the Welsh Dairy Show to showcase how the business has progressed in recent years with a new milk vending machine venture.

After receiving a degree in agriculture at Bangor University, Gareth returned to the farm in 1982. He married Monica in 1985 to form a partnership.

They have four grown-up children; Sara and Alaw are both secondary school teachers, whilst Rhys the eldest son is a director at Prostock Vets and helps on the farm on his days off.

Ifan, the youngest son, returned from Aberystwyth in 2014 to join his mother and father in partnership. By now the family farm some 700 acres, with 520 owned in a block within a mile of Goitre Fach.

The family keeps a herd of 250 pedigree Holsteins, with a rolling 305d average of approximately 10,500 litres. They have also gained master breeder status in 2019 with the pedigree cows.

They are fed on a grazing system, with the highs kept in at night all year round, while the lows graze day and night during the summer.

The cattle are fed on home grown maize and grass silage, with concentrates fed in the milking parlour and in out-of parlour feeders. They also keep some 280 followers, with surplus heifers sold as fresh calvers, through local markets or privately at home.

In addition to this, they keep a flock of 300 pedigree Berrichon ewes, with 60 yearling rams sold annually.

During the Covid-19 lockdown the family started to pasteurise and sell milk, milkshake and ice-cream through a vending machine under the business name of Llaeth Beynon Dairy.

This side of the enterprise is run by Ifan, and by now employs two full time staff members and has three machines and a mobile trailer, with further two machines imminent to be located in Swansea city centre. He also supplies local coffee shops daily.

Speaking after the visit, FUW president Glyn Roberts said: “Family farms like Goitre Fach are a credit to our industry as a whole and the dairy industry. They make an immeasurable contribution to the local and rural economy, as well as providing nutritious and sustainable food.

“We have highlighted the fact that family farms in particular are at the heart of our rural economy. Farms like these are caring for our landscape, and of course our culture and they make innumerable other contributions to the well-being of Wales and the UK.

“Welsh food production sustains tens of thousands of other businesses – from upstream businesses such as feed merchants, agricultural contractors and engineers, to downstream businesses such as hauliers, processors and retailers and it is evident that for every pound generated on farm, around £6 is spent in the wider economy.”