A Mauchline farmer said he feels "let down" by the dairy industry after fighting its corner against a Swedish company during an online debate around climate change.

Bryce Cunningham, of the award-winning Mossgiel Organic Farm, took part in a debate with representatives of the Oatly Group, which manufactures alternatives to dairy products using oats.

Oatly had put out a call for a "big dairy executive" to join the 'Ask Me Anything' style debate on the social news and discussion website Reddit.

And despite the plea being seen by around 26 million people, Bryce was told that he was the only one who responded to the call - meaning he would be co-hosting the discussion.

Bryce told the Chronicle: "We feel let down by our industry in that Oatly invited the ‘suits’ and ‘big wigs’ to take part in this event, but none showed up so we felt obliged to compete..

"I feel this is a watershed moment for our industry in that the traditional dairies and supermarkets have lost interest, and it’s up to businesses like us to change things from the soil up."

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Oatly were discussing climate labelling on food products – noting that they had been printing carbon footprint values on their packaging for some time, while the dairy industry had not.

On the day of the event, Oatly began the discussion by announcing that there were no big dairy executives who applied, but that a special guest would be brought in after the first hour of the two hour long event.

Bryce was that special guest.

Discussing the climate impact of our food systems, the challenges of calculating carbon footprints due to irregularities in rules, and the 'greenwashing' of some brands, Bryce said he held his own in what he called a "David vs Goliath" experience against the multinational brand.

While Bryce said he'd enjoyed the chance to discuss the issue, he felt disappointed that nobody else from the dairy industry wanted to take part.

Cumnock Chronicle:

"It [climate labelling] is not a straightforward thing to do," he said.

"In farming, there is more than one way to calculate your climate impact. All give different results depending on your farming type.

"We were fine talking about it – because it’s an important issue people care about. Do you know who wasn’t fine talking about it? Big dairy.

"What is going on? There are thousands of dairy farms across Europe with hard working families.

"If our industry won’t support it’s farmers financially, or in debates, how are farmers going to afford to install climate positive measures to lower the impact on the environment?

"Crazily, as a ‘kudos’ for taking them on head-to-head, Oatly has offered to pay for us to get our own climate footprint worked out to put our emissions on our bottles."

Mossgiel's organic milk was judged the 'best overall product' at the Scottish Food and Drink Excellence in September, and is also a past winner at the Scottish Retail Food and Drink Awards and the Scottish Rural Awards.

Bryce and his wife Ashlea decided to ditch single use plastics from their business at the start of 2019 - and in the four years since then, their move has resulted in the use of 15 million fewer pieces of non-recyclable plastic materials in the area.

The farm also supplies its organic milk to East Ayrshire Council - resulting in 400,000 single-use bottles being wiped from the local authority's waste output.