Star comment - Pay up for milk or lose dairy farms

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.