Star comment - Pay up for milk or lose dairy farms
Here are the stark economics facing the struggling dairy farmers of Shropshire and Mid Wales.
It is now costing them 31.5p to produce every litre of their milk. When they come to sell it, they get, if they are lucky, 29.5p. Or less.
If you were a dairy farmer, is that the sort of business you would want to hand down to your children? What incentive is there for anybody, anywhere, to want to be a dairy farmer?
These figures are not a blip, but a constant reality which casts a dark shadow over an industry of long hours and hard work.
Something has to change or else the countryside will, through the malign operation of perverse economics, be ethnically cleansed of dairy farmers. They will cut their losses and head for the exit door.
Take a good look at any cows that you see out in the fields today, because within a generation they will have disappeared and our countryside will have fundamentally changed forever. No more grazed pastures, just ploughed fields or scrubland.
There have been positive movements in the milk crisis of late with a welcome rise in prices the dairy companies are paying to farmers. However the price will have to go up a few pence more if the dairy farmers are not to sell at a loss.
The current situation is unsustainable and the voluntary code of practice being drawn up is desperately needed to introduce some stability and confidence for the future.
Just as cheap fuel is a distant memory for motorists, cheap milk may have to become a thing of the past.
If there is a mass exodus of dairy farmers, that will happen anyway. The consequence of failure today is that there will be no dairy industry tomorrow.
Comments for: "Star comment - Pay up for milk or lose dairy farms"
Wenlock Un
"through the malign operation of perverse economics"?
No. Through the most basic operation of Economics, whereby Supply exceeds Demand hence prices fall.
As for any wholesale "ethnic cleansing" of the countryside (rather dramatic, and since when was Dairy Farming an ethnicity?) this would be due to the 'perverse' economic behaviors of those in the industry who;
a) choose to stay in the market whilst the current pricing conditions continue indefinitely, or
b) choose to leave the industry, after equilibrium (and price) is restored to the market by some of the dairy-farming population leaving the industry.
Whilst I sympathise with anyone facing such a decision to change career, the fact is that every one of us is potentially faced with this scenario in current times, so why is there an expectation of protection?
Interesting to watch the programme last week, where a group of 50 people observed a dairy farmer, asking questions of his lifestyle, resulting in him reaching the conclusion that he quite simply needed to get out of it, for quality of life. He knew this himself, but the pressures of tradition and family expectation meant that he hadn't. Times are changing for us all and a temporary adjustment to the milk price isn't going to stop that.
H. St. John Peasbody
Leave it to the market. Once sufficient farmers have left the industry and supply is reduced, milk's selling price will increase.
Huw Peach
Marxism failed because it didn't understand the market.
Today the market is failing because it doesn't understand the fact that cows are not machines.
It is completely unsustainable to think that we can carry on expecting the price of milk to drop because of market forces.
Milk needs to be more expensive, and people buying their milk need to recognise that every drop in price brings us closer to an ugly, unhealthy and cruel intensification of this industry, which most people -if confronted with the reality- don't want.
Which country wants their farmers to fail? No country in the world.