Putin ban on food imports has had major effect on prices of EU dairy and vegetables

Prices in the European Union for perishable fruit and vegetables have been hit hard by the crisis, falling by up to 50 per cent in some cases. The ban on EU dairy products is also starting to bite very hard, particularly for cheese which is dropping in value almost daily.

In all, EU farm exports to Russia are worth around £11 billion annually making up roughly 10 per cent of all EU food sales. Russia imported over £1bn worth of cheese and butter from the EU in 2013. Latest figures to June 2014 confirm that Russia imported 110,000 tonnes of cheese directly from the EU in the first six months of 2014, but that excludes cheese EU member states sold to countries like Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania, which was then exported on to Russia.

With so much downward pressure on milk prices, it seems almost inevitable that dairy farmers are heading for a winter of discontent.

Arla Foods, the global dairy cooperative owned by 13,500 dairy farmers, of whom around 3,500 are British, was the first milk processor to blame the Russian trade ban as one of the reasons for its latest cut in milk prices announced last week.

The EU is going to have to compete fiercely on global markets with the US and New Zealand to find new homes for their banned dairy produce.

All this international trade is a far cry from how milk was sold back in the 18th and 19th century, that is well-chronicled in Adam Gray's book, White Gold?

Because milk was so perishable, supplies depended on how long it would keep "sweet" or fresh between the cow and the consumer in an unadulterated and unpasteurised state. As the roads were very poor and there were no railways, the area of supply depended on the time it took to walk a horse and cart slowly from the farm to the town to make milk available to the housewife in the morning.

Those dairy farmers in more remote locations, unable to sell their milk fresh, had to make it into cheese.

The slow and inadequate transport system of those times was unable to meet the increasing urban demand, and that led to the rise of "town dairies".

In many places milk reached the public by small dairy farmers driving cows round the streets that were milked straight into the consumers' jugs. Where there were only a few houses, milk could be bought from a cow or goat lead from door-to-door, and "milked while you waited".

In other places the herds were driven into a milking shed behind a shop and the milk would then be bought over the counter, or from someone carrying it round the streets on a yolk. Other more enterprising shopkeepers kept a few cows of their own in byres at the back of their shops.

To improve these circumstances, entrepreneurial dairymen set up cow sheds within the boundaries of larger towns. Some of them rented or owned land within the suburbs of the towns. The milk produced came from herds of varying size. Some had a few cows serving a number of streets nearby, while the larger herds extended to several hundred.

As recently as 1927, Edinburgh still had 97 dairies with 3,750 cows. Byres Road in Glasgow is so named as a result of the dairy cows that were kept and milked in byres there.

There was also a 1,000-cow herd situated in Port Dundas in Glasgow, on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal. A whole army of dairymaids lived in rooms above the stalls and every day others came from districts such as Possilpark and Maryhill to help with the milking.

On a square with Bath Street in the south, Sauchiehall Street in the east and Renfield Street in the west was the "Grand Byre" that held 260 cows.

When the streets were quiet during the night, hundreds of horses and carts brought grass, hay, kale, turnips, oats and the like into the town byres to feed thousands of cows.

Similarly, those carts returned to the surrounding farms loaded with dung.

With the advent of smooth railways, tarred roads and refrigeration, the town byres fell into disuse. Milk, cheese, butter and dried milk powders are now traded internationally on a vast scale.