Stop milking dairy farmers – or lose them

The cruel price squeeze on dairy farmers by supermarkets needs addressing urgently. Four-pint bottles of milk cost £1 in supermarkets. Who requested this price? Marketing experts will tell us that they listen to what the consumer desires. I don’t recall any such request by customers.

I believe there should be a minimum price of 50p on a pint of milk, thus bringing the four-pint bottle to £2. After all, people pay much more for a pint of beer.

Dairy farmers are going out of business. We need them – so stop milking them.

Chris Hyland, Northampton The supermarkets are hiding behind ‘market forces’ in their treatment of dairy farmers. The choice to support our farmers is theirs to make.

No one in their right mind would complain about a couple more pence on a pint of milk – it’s still cheaper than the rip-off cost of a bottle of water or fizzy drink.

Meanwhile, the Government is more than happy to watch the demise of yet another British industry, releasing more green fields for ugly wind farms.

D.N. Harris, Fareham, Hampshire We should give farmers all the help they need and we should appreciate the good that they do in bringing us the produce from their lands. We can’t let this industry fall by the wayside.

Jean Miles, Harlech, North Wales What the supermarkets are doing to farmers, forcing them to supply milk at prices too low for them to live on, is nothing less than slavery.

We should all boycott supermarket milk – there are always local dairy producers, and one can be sure that, with them, the profit is going to the right people.

If we don’t bother to do this, we are all complicit in the ruin of farming families. How many of us could keep families on the pittance farmers are supposed to live on?

P. Maher, Looe, Cornwall The crisis in the dairy industry, in which milk producers are currently paid less per pint for their milk than it costs them to produce it, will have an adverse effect on everyone. If dairy farmers are put out of business, milk will become scarcer and more expensive.

Most consumers won’t mind paying a premium to support the farmers and their families as they work seven days a week. It’s penny-wise and poundfoolish for supermarkets to rip off farmers now. We don’t want to be paying through the nose for our milk later on. The Government should deal with this as a matter of urgency.

Neil Oliver, Newtownards,

Co Down