Milk cheaper than water?!

You might have seen on the news today and across twitter about the 1000 odd farmers visiting Westminster today to demonstrate their anger and frustration about their pay from dairy processors for their milk they produce being cut. It seems rather unfair to my mind that in the shops these days when you order a coffee most of the time its fair-trade (the workers are being given a good price) but the farmer who produced the milk is being screwed over! We’ll save the third world farmers but turn a blind eye to ours?
Dairy farmers like most farmers work 24hrs every day 365 days a year with little or no time off. They milk their cows twice times a day a process which takes hours. Most dairy farmers are on contract to one of the top three milk processors and the contracts are long! There’s little other option especially when the processor decides to cut the cost they pay their farmers. Many are tied into contracts that force them to sell their milk at 25p/litre which even with all costs slashed still costs more than 30p/litre to produce. All they are asking is a fair set price in their contracts. Not much to ask for when you consider our European neighbours get as much as 10p litre more than ours do!
From the 1st August Wiseman, Dairy Crest, Arla and First Milk have announced they will drop the price they pay their farmers by up to 2p a litre (4p since the start of most recent contracts) Bear in mind Dairy crest already make 9.8p profit after cost per litre.

30p/litre is the cost to produce!
Producers Pay Their Farmers
Wiseman – 24.73p
Dairy Crest – 24.92p
Arla – 24.5p
Supermarkets Pay Their Farmers
M & S – 31.93p
Tesco – 29.56p
Sainsburys – 30.5p
Waitrose – more than 29p
Morrisons – 25.92p
Asda – 25.52p
Co-op – 25.73p

The cost to us is 46p a pint (that’s just over half a litre)
Doesn’t seem quite fair somehow does it? Perhaps made worse by the agriculture minister admitting that while he knew where the milk came from he didn’t know the cost of it! After all his wife apparently buys the milk! The farmers are asking to be paid a fair price and a fair price on the shelf for you! Please sign their petition and get behind them!



Or follow their struggle on twitter #sosdairy

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