Live long and prosper in the world of dairying

Reports of another crisis in the dairy sector prompt Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger to urge Defra Secretary George Eustice to focus on correcting agriculture’s deficiencies before setting the industry on a new course

DEAR George, Few more alarming statistics have popped up in the farming sector of late than those relating to the problems of labour shortages in the dairy sector.

Which – according to what I read this week – are now of such a magnitude that nearly a third of the farmers who are putting the world’s finest milk on our tables are now seriously considering throwing in the udder wipe.

I hope, George, you don’t need me to tell you that the problems afflicting dairying are very long-standing and deep-rooted ones, dating back to the abolition of the Milk Marketing Board and the simultaneous removal of any bargaining power farmers might have been able to wield in the market.

What ensued was a sorry catalogue of failed restructuring and the steady transfer of all the chips to the processors and retailers.

And it came as no surprise at all to learn that conditions in the world of dairying continue to decline.

I don’t know how strongly this is registering on the Government’s radar, George, but it is an extremely worrying situation which really needs to be addressed – and with a greater degree of determination than has been shown previously.

We simply have to do something to ensure there is a far more equitable distribution of profits in the dairy industry and the first initiative must be to stop milk being retailed at such criminally low prices.

In the world of marketing it is well known that if you sell something – even a high-quality product – too cheaply, consumers have no respect for it. And I would suggest that is the situation which currently pertains with milk. The longer milk is heavily discounted the more people are going to under-value it and the more difficult it will be to lever prices up to a point where the farmers – as well as the processors and retailers – are able to draw a profit from sales.

Research was done some years ago to show that shoppers would be prepared to pay more for their milk if the whole of the increase were passed back to the primary producers. And of course the retailers and processors immediately threw up a barbed wire defence to that, arguing it was far more complicated than merely adding five pence a pint on the shelf and adding a corresponding amount to the milk cheque. In other words they weren’t prepared to do it unless they got their cut, too.

No one had the guts and determination to argue that that was pure fallacy – which it was, retailers and processors knowing full well that the longer farmers are left in a weakened position the more desperate they will be to accept any price for a product whose one glaring weakness is its lack of a shelf life.

I would advocate more farmers going into processing and direct distribution, adding value to produce butter, cheese, yogurt and ice cream but fewer and fewer of them are now financially equipped – or young enough – to take that first step to follow many others into a situation of profitable independence.

We have to create prosperity in the dairy sector so producers can offer a better, more financially-attractive working environment to employees. If nothing is done there are two

potential outcomes. Firstly that we shall have to start importing large volumes of milk and secondly that there could be shortages and empty shelves – at which point at least consumers might at last come to appreciate the true value of milk.

But yet again George, the Government has to concentrate on correcting the fundamental weaknesses in the farming sector before blithely ploughing ahead with its ambitious, sweeping proposals for completely reshaping the face of British agriculture.

You don’t, after all, set out on a car journey with a flat tyre.

> It came as no surprise at all to learn that conditions in the world of dairying continue to decline, says Ian