General Chat

Supermarkets like Morrisons and Asda continue to sell milk below the cost it takes to produce..

There's a good article in The Telegraph is somebody would be so kind as to put it up, pretty please... <3

I feel for the dairy farmers.

Haven't they come to an agreement today?

I only read that Morrisons are going to be selling a more expensive bottle of milk which gives the consumer the option of paying a little extra to the farmer.

I think it's a cop-out.

By Emily Gosden

8:20PM BST 11 Aug 2015
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Morrisons has been accused of making an inadequate “token gesture” towards Britain’s struggling dairy industry after launching a new expensive milk brand to "help" farmers while continuing to pay them “unsustainably” low prices for its regular brand.

The supermarket giant, which has been targeted by protesters over its treatment of dairy farmers, on Tuesday announced it would introduce a new “Milk For Farmers” range, at a 10p per litre premium to its standard range.

The milk would be exactly the same type as the regular brand, but the extra cash would be "passed back directly to dairy farmers".

The brand will be available for four pint, 2.3-litre units of milk, which usually retail at 89p, implying a likely cost of £1.12 for the new range. Morrisons said the new product would offer its customers “the choice to support dairy farmers directly”.

But critics accused the retail giant of trying to “absolve itself of its responsibility to trade fairly” by passing the issue on to consumers and said if supermarkets wanted to engage in price wars over milk they should eat into their own profits, not farmers’.

The NFU says the dairy farming industry is facing an unprecedented crisis

Farmers unions say that they currently receive as little as 22p to 24p per litre from supermarkets such as Morrisons and Asda – well below the 28p cost of production.

Some of their rivals including Sainsbury’s and Tesco, which currently charge consumers £1 for four pints, do pay farmers a price that covers their costs – but with the bulk of the market failing to do so, farmers say the industry is in crisis.

Meurig Raymond, the National Farmers Union President, said the price farmers received from Morrisons’s standard milk was “unsustainable” and urged consumers to "please search out the milk that is guaranteeing those farmers a fair price".

He warned that farmers were “haemorrhaging” money and said more than 250 dairy farmers had already quit so far this year in the worst crisis he had ever seen for the industry.

He said surveys suggested that "British consumers would be prepared to pay more so long as that money went back to the dairy farmers".

DT: Once yr 20 articles or so are over open the cookies settings of yr browser and delete all with "tele" in the cookie name. Then off you go again with a reset to zero. Easier than hacking Angry Birds and less fun but if you need to consult the Daily Blue ...

We left the dairy industry many years ago after losing money for some years, my husband's family having farmed for generations.

They were up at 5.00 am and worked long hours. They were good businessmen but needed to buy in quota… the milk price was so low… we got out before we lost our homes.

Thank you, Rollo :-) :-)

The problem is that global demand has fallen, especially in China.

Countries like New Zealand have consolidated and become more efficient, with fewer large herds with automated milking etc. Do we want that here? Are we prepared to pay more for milk which is produced by small herds and local farmers? The large-scale plants cause their own problems - tons of slurry etc and one could argue that Britain's geography isn't suited to a few industrial milk-producing centres. Who would want it in their back yard?

Also, it's not just milk - it's all the other products, yogurts, cheese, dried milk etc. How many of these contain British milk?

Wasn't this on the news this afternoon in simple terms?

That was the problem, Sheila. We had invested in new buildings and were just in the process of increasing the herd and had taken on huge borrowings just when quotas were introduced. We missed out on receiving enough quota..

At the time it seemed so bonkers to be stopping the British farmers from producing as much milk as they wanted, yet importing it.. soon there will be no British dairy farms.

That's so sad, Lavender.

I was thinking more of the huge, factory dairy farms they have in the USA, cows aren't grazed on grass but fed in huge sheds. I would hate to see that in the UK. In an ideal world we would produce all our own milk for UK consumption and export any surplus, and not import purely for cheapness (what are the welfare standards of imported cheap milk?) But it's a hard old globe out there...

I agree, Sheila :-)

It is very hard out there indeed and a real world.

The farmers may feel hard done by but also they get thousands in EC supplements and grants - so where do we go?

It can't be right that they are paid less money than it costs to produce?

In actual fact, my husband has a better quality of life than when he was farming but how sad to lose all the dairy herds in our country when we could be self-sufficient.

edit* the supermarkets shouldn't be selling the milk as loss leaders.

It's a market economy - if you don't like it then get out - too many farmers cry poverty whilst they sell off their fields for development - ie support raping the countryside

Farmers get massive sums of money through the EC and it is about time we said no more!

When we bought the farm in 1986 we could have bought milk quotas for pennies. We decided not to because we would have been minions in the local market.

That was a good decision because after we moved and started talking to farmers at the Friday market we heard of the 'millionaires club'. They met once a month in a pub near Castell Newydd Emlyn we subsequently found out that these were dairy farmers who were in debt by at least £1m

The local cheese factory closed, was bought, reopened, closed and reopened again. Each time knowing they had the whip hand and could squeeze prices down a couple of times each year. We've seen milk poured down the drains in protest at the prices farmers are paid.

When the UK's biggest supermarket opened in the town the local shops and milk deliveries suffered and when we left we only knew one independent milkman still in business and that only due to the loyalty of his customers.

The supermarkets could and should sell milk as one of their loss leaders they make enough money selling high priced items.

Families must be able to buy, within their budgets, sufficient quantities of full fat milk for growing children plus dairy based products for calcium.

Over to you supermarkets!!!!!

Edit: didn't see Lavender's comment about loss leaders before I started typing so great minds think alike







:-D

That is a lovely and beautiful naive attitude but not exactly correct today.

Farmers get too much in the way of subsidies, too much in the way of compensation, and too much full stop.

They are no different than the chaps that held the country to ransom over fuel a few years back and they need to join the 21st century

I'm just sorry that the fabric of the countryside will change, there used to be several farms around our village.

Sad that families won't be able to buy British milk, ours was a good quality product.

It's like so many other industries which are being lost to this country, future generations will suffer when we are not self sufficient.

If the supermarkets like Morrisons wish to sell cheap milk, let them take the brunt and pay the farmer a fair price. Why should families doing their weekly shop be expected to pay more for a bottle of milk as if the farmer were a charity?

I think you must have been listening to the guy on the radio speaking this afternoon, Errol? I only caught the back end of it, was a load of tosh.

There are still farms everywhere !

The dairy farms are fast disappearing. I can't even think of a dairy herd in our area, probably not for ten miles.