Dairy producers ‘short-changed’

Despite recent increases in the price of liquid milk, Scotland’s dairy farmers are still being shortchanged, it was claimed yesterday.

And while contract prices paid to many farmers are approaching 30p per litre (ppl), the spot price currently stand at closer to 40ppl, according to NFU Scotland vice-president Gary Mitchell.

Speaking after a stormy meeting of the union’s milk committee, at which producers from across the country expressed their anger and frustration at current pricing, he said that retailer domination continued to starve the industry of much needed cash: “With a difficult summer to graze cows, make forage and harvest grain, winter milk production will not come cheap, so scaremongering about over-production is the least of anyone’s worries.”

Mitchell said that prices paid by the processors and retailers needed to give a true reflection of where the market currently stood for milk and dairy products if some confidence was to be built within the industry.

Milk policy manager George Jamieson added that commodity market indicators for milk powder, cheese and butter had more than doubled from the disastrous lows of 2016, but these were not filtering back to producers.

“Given the disastrous prices farmers had to endure through 2015 and 2016, this is surely a time when very legitimate, justifiable milk price increases should be coming down the supply chain,” he said.

“Processors who hide behind the threat of oversupply, or drop prices at the first sign of a ‘weakening market’, are irresponsible.”