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U.K. dairy producers want help

Dairy farmers in Northern Ireland met with Minister of Agriculture Michelle O’Neill and members of their national assembly Agriculture Committee on Thursday in an effort to get the United Kingdom to do something about milk prices. The producers have requested a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron. The Belfast Telegraph says the more than 200 farmers attending the meeting want to meet with the Prime Minister in hopes he can convince European Union Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan to raise the EU intervention price. The trigger for the EU to purchase excess butter and powder was set more than a decade ago and is well below the current cost of production.

Recently Arla, the dairy cooperative which buys the milk of 25 percent of the U.K.’s producers announced another price cut of 0.8 PPL (pence per liter) putting the farmgate price at 23.01 PPL as of August 3^rd. That works out to about $11.69 per hundredweight, well below the estimated $17 cost of production. The co-op cited the 10.7 percent decline in prices at the most recent Global Dairy Trade auction as an indication of the declining value of milk on the world market.

 

Some British dairy farmers have come up with a new way to protest low milk prices. UK farmgate prices have plummeted because of a price war among four major grocery store chains. On Monday evening about 60 dairy farmers went into a grocery store in South Glouchestershire, took all of the milk off the shelves, put it in shopping carts and then left the loaded carts at the checkout counter. A video of the event has gone viral on the internet.

The farmers have challenged other farmers to see if they can empty a supermarket’s dairy case faster than they did. One producer said they are going to keep doing this until the supermarkets start paying farmers a fair price for milk.