World Milk Day 2021 proves a social media hit

The annual celebration was established more than 20 years ago by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN to recognise the importance of milk as a global food, and to celebrate the dairy sector. Since then, each year, the benefits of milk and other dairy products have been actively promoted in the UK and around the world with different themes. This year’s theme was sustainability.

The NFU dairy board and its members around the country were again proud to support the day.

World Milk Day in numbers

• On Twitter, we celebrated #WorldMilkDay with seven tweets, which focused on nutrition and the benefits of milk and dairy as part of a balanced diet.

• One of the best performing posts was an NFU infographic (below) of how British dairy cows turn grass into nutritious milk, cream and cheeses. This was re-tweeted 130 times and had 340 likes.
• On Facebook, this same image generated 500 likes and 280 shares which meant that it was seen by more than 40,000 people. Thanks to all these shares, likes and positive comments, more than 60% of the people who saw this post don’t follow our account, meaning that we reached new people with our positive messages about British dairy.

• Meanwhile, on Instagram, young Derbyshire dairy farmer and NFU dairy board member, Jess Langton, took over the NFU Countryside page, and showed first-hand through a number of stories and posts how her farm’s grazing system promotes sustainability and how her higher-level stewardship scheme, which includes a nesting lapwing site, promotes biodiversity on farm. Jess’s videos and images were liked and viewed thousands of times.
• Worldwide, over 417 campaigns in 68 countries took place around the world and messages during the day reached more than 842 million people.