He announced that £176,000 will be invested in the dairy industry’s first Continuous Professional Development (CPD) scheme.

In its first year it will set standards for attaining a specific level of knowledge and skills before rolling these out to more than 1,000 dairy farmers and workers over the following two years. The scheme will become self sustaining by 2015.

Jim Paice said: “Britain has the ideal natural conditions for dairy farming. The industry itself has identified how skills could be improved and I hope that some of the next generation of proud dairy farmers will benefit from this scheme.”

The training will be coordinated by DairyCo and will promote increased domestic agricultural production by improving efficiency.

Tim Bennett, chairman of DairyCo said: “Today’s dairy farmers need an increasing armoury of skills and breadth of knowledge. We’re delighted to receive this funding which will support the industry development of a CPD programme to identify and improve these skills, as well as setting a recognised standard.”

Whilst at the event, the Minister also highlighted the other work that Defra is doing to support the dairy industry. But he stressed that the future prosperity of the industry lies in its own hands.

Jim Paice continued: “We are doing what we can to help the industry by tackling bTB, investing millions into research on dairy, looking at ways to reduce regulation and supporting industry with the Dairy 2020 project. We want to see the whole dairy supply chain being able to grow domestic markets and explore new export markets.”