Shropshire Star

Farming Talk - August 16

Published
Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer living near Ellesmere

"No butter by Christmas"? That's what Peter Tuborgh says. Unless you sell milk to Arla, you won't have heard of him. He's their Chief Executive and, presumably influential in decisions for the dairy industry, and subsequently the price and availability of our dairy products.

He made that quote, and then explained that "the issue is a shortage of milk coming to the market on the back of a number of dairy farmers leaving the industry amid the severe downturn in farm gate-prices". That's industry speak for greed and mismanagement by the milk buyers, like Arla, Muller, Dairy Crest and others. Only my opinion of course.

There are always problems with pricing milk, right from cow to customer, especially since companies were set up to trade milk. Then there are Futures Markets and Spot Prices. Anyone who watched Eddie Murphy making a mockery of dealing pork bellies in Trading Places may understand how volatile and even ridiculous the whole situation is.

So, for years, at least since milk quotas ended, lotsa milk meant lotsa money. This lead to a glut which lead to a rush to the bottom by buyers to pay the least, which forced many farmers to sell up. As I've said boringly, many times, if it costs X pence to produce a litre of milk and you only get paid 'X-minus' something is wrong. The answer appeared to be, more cows to produce more milk, to try and cover costs. But then buyers just paid 'X-minus-minus' per litre. They weren't interested in anything but 'white water'- milk with very little fat. So now what? Produce less milk, and feed diets to increase fat and protein. Farmers know these diets improve cows' health, cost less to produce (fewer expensive additions), and reduce the glut to the markets, raising prices because buyers have to pay more to get milk.

Anyone with a glut of courgettes, like I have, will know that you can't give them away, which doesn't worry me, but to farmers it's the difference between cows and no cows. In what my friend's grandson calls the 'good old days', you just had to milk the cow and get the churn to gate. Now, you have to choose a buyer or be chosen, predict what you'll get paid, not produce more milk than agreed, (or be penalised), and keep the bank manager happy. Ah, the good old days!

This is about the cost of our pinta. Keeping our farmers. Oh! and profit for the buyers. They're all inter-dependent.

Rosemary Allen