More Oxfordshire dairy farmers will abandon the industry if the price of milk keeps falling, warn local farmers and their union.

John Hook, a fourth-generation dairy farmer who runs Cote Lodge Farm, near Witney, with his son Tim, said: “People will get out. You can’t produce milk at that price. It’s not sustainable.”

Mr Hook, who has 200 dairy cows, said he was being paid 22 pence per litre (ppl) for the milk he produced, which was less than the cost of production.

“Sensibly, we should be gone. It’s that bad.”

Arla Foods, the global dairy co-operative owned by 13,500 dairy farmers, about 3,000 of whom are in the UK, announced last Friday that it would further reduce the price it paid farmers by 0.8p to 23ppl, effective August 3.

Ash Amirahmadi, Arla’s head of UK milk and member services, said the downward price trend was worldwide.

He added: “The situation is not helped by high milk production throughout the world, while demand from China and Russia, in particular, continues to be low.”

John Bates, the press and public relations manager of industry body AHDB Dairy (previously known as DairyCo), said the average price of milk paid to UK farmers in the year to June 2015 fell by 24 per cent, with prices ranging from a high of 32.9ppl to a low of 19ppl.

He said the cost of production was much higher, ranging from 30ppl to 32ppl.

Harry Manners was a third-generation dairy farmer until he and his father Richard sold their 180 dairy cows in March, because it was becoming too difficult to cover the cost of producing milk.

“I don’t regret selling our cows,” said Mr Manners.

The Manners family reinvested “a large proportion” of the proceeds to set up pig-raising facilities, which they hire out to pig owners.We converted our cow sheds into pig housing,” he said.

“We’re not going to get rich on it but we will have a steady income.”

Tom Cackett, the National Farmers Union county adviser for Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, said many dairy farmers would “think about getting out” if the price cuts continued.

He said the number of dairy farmers in Oxfordshire was now 42, down from 43 in 2014 and 75 a decade ago.

The NFU official said the average milk price paid to farmers was 24ppl in May 2015, but that he expected this to fall to about 22ppl by August.

He said key drivers of declining milk prices were UK supermarkets lowering the price of milk; EU trade sanctions against Russia due to the Ukraine crisis; China over-buying powered milk a year ago; and the EU and UK producing increased quantities of milk in 2014.