In conversation with local dairy farmers, I hear significant anxieties about the sustainability of the industry. It is clear that the emergency funds distributed from the Dairy Fund do not provide a long-term solution. There need to be some measures put in place which deal with the fundamental problem which is, simply put, that the price of milk paid to dairy farmers does not cover the costs of production. As a result the amount of milk produced in the UK is dropping and it becomes increasingly difficult for those who are continuing to farm here. This is not just an economic question but a welfare question – perhaps, one might say, a social justice question. I welcome the news from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills that a body will be set up to enforce the Grocery Suppliers Code of Practice. With the help of Government and the supermarkets perhaps we might see a more sustainable and healthy dairy industry again. Perhaps the supermarket magazines such as Sainsbury’s Magazine (http://www2.sainsburys.co.uk/food/sainsburysmagazine/current_issue.htm) or Tesco Magazine (http://www.tesco.com/todayattesco/index.shtml) may take notice of this issue.
The Rt Revd Stephen Platten, Bishop of Wakefield
Hansard link to Question asked on 24th February, 2010:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100224-0001.htm#10022468000358
You may have to visit confession for that joke!
On the issue – and as country born and bred – I’m very sympathetic to the plight of farmers but can’t see anything in the ministers reply that offers anything new but warm words. It seems like actually making real progress on fair treatment for farmers is being kicked into the long grass no doubt by some very expensive industry lobbying.
Your Grace Stephen,
I have lived surrounded by cows and dairy farmers for much of my life. There were four dairy farms within a mile of here, and they have all closed for want of a profit, in the last ten years. BSE and F+M put an end to many who were merely thinking of giving up.
The Dairy industry has now followed the
Egg and hen business in the 1950s, when battery farming became all the rage, amongst farmers.
There are now BATTERY COWS, but WHERE IS THE CAMPAIGN for minimum standards?
There are good profits to be made from Battery milk.
Does you supermarket label milk as BATTERY MILK or FREE RANGE COWS?
My own knowledge of keeping hens and being close to cows livestock for many years, is that a cow would suffer every bit as much as a chicken, from such conditions.
Dairy Cows were worked to the bone even when they did have the freedom of the pasture and meadow, but what about now, when the public can not even see HOW they are being worked?
Where is the labelling in the supermarkets to tell you that this milk is not made with concentrated animal proteins, but with hay and fresh grass????????????
Welcome my Noble Lord and a fine subject to start with I may say.
Since the 70`s and the tremendous growth and power of supermarkets we have seen a business trend that brings dismay to me. Although not legally wrong it is not always seen as ethical. I can remember the old Covent Garden and Nine Elms following Supermarket buyers aroundand the prices they paid were significantly less because of buying power. This put a lot of small shops out of business and the feeling was a soon as they did prices rose in the supermarkets.
Milk has been a similar story and the milk delivery industry has suffered too, milkman are a rare sight now because supermarket pricing is cheaper. However once the supermarkets are left as the sole buyers they dictate the price they will pay which often leaves the farmer out of pocket.
Farmgate prices, the price farmers are paidhave fallen slightly recently to 24.667 ppl.
http://www.dairyco.org.uk/datum/milk-prices-and-contracts/farmgate-prices/uk,-gb-and-ni-farmgate-prices.aspx
Supermarket milk ranges from 67p- £1.05 per litre of whole milk (Sainsbury`s). That`s a significant mark up from the farm gate and no cows to deal with or feed.
For the relative calculators out there milk was 17p a pint in 1980 the equivalent of 50p in 2006. So today seem`s significantly cheaper. However from 1914 to 1970 a LITRE wouldhave cost you the equivalent of 20p in todays price.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/milk-you-know-its-good-for-you-464579.html
The 70`s of course are famous not only for the rise of supermarkets but also our entry to the EU. I do remember talk of cheap EU milk flooding our markets but at present we are cheaper, is this because Supermarkets refuse to pass profit to the farmers, I believe so.
It is worrying that Dairy farmers are having to be protected by the same type of priciple as the Fair Trade one for third world workers. The Fair Milk campaign of the European Milk Board are having to work to obtain reasonable prices for European milk because someone is not being fair. I pay the price at the till, the farmer is paid by supermarkets…That only leaves industry who cannot be playing fair. So next time you hear the billions Tesco has made this quarter remember whose back they did it on.
http://www.fairmilk.org/en/fairmilk/who-is-behind-the-fair-milk-campaign.html
It is not only milk it occurs with which is why we can`tget a decent potato like King Edwards anymore. Farmers are forced to grow cheap and sell cheap but supermarkets do ok.
http://www.omsco.co.uk/
Your Excellency Bishop of Wakefield,
(That is how American RCs address bishops of the Christian Communions) I am glad that as a Pastor you are able to be awake to what is in your field of cre for those in the flock of your pasture. The British Constitution is still nearly (at least) the cream of the crop because in Lords some can be heard whose view of the herd would de ignored elsewhere. To attempt justice and agrarian values in Christ is to help bring the Biblical Land of Milk and Honey into the modern British world of Experience. One may be tempted to crassly milk some metaphors till the cows come home but really there is a truth to the value of farm life in civilization that a bishop is better placed to understand than most leaders. In the end farming can never be seen only in mercantile and capitalist terms. Like the church, the family and the law it is never reducible only to funds and technology.
It is nice to hear from one of the Lords Spiritual.
Dad, you may like this site which, using your data, gave the following results:
In 2006, £0.17 from 1980 was worth:
£0.50 using the retail price index
£0.50 using the GDP deflator
£0.79 using the average earnings
£0.90 using the per capita GDP
£0.96 using the share of GDP
http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/
The price of houses by comparison, and it may be similar,went from £10,000 to £300,000 in the same period, and has a disproportionate effect on all Lady Tizzy’s figures.
I suspect the Bishop is being practical in his remakrs and npot making comparisons with a human flock or herd for any purpose.
Looking at the link below, the Wets country milk cooperative and the Yeo Valley Dairies, there is not that much wrong with certain aspects of dairying, and it IS improving with more independent local organic dairies springing up round the country.
Whilst battery dairying, sounds as bad as
Chicken batteries, they may have the choice to spend some of their lives in the open air during the summer; that is a good choice for a cow to have since they do not particularly enjoy the dirt and rain of the winter outside, and some herds do have to do that.
Animal rights campaigners may have a case against some businesses who keep their livestock inside in Battery conditions throughout the year. This is not ethical farming and their produce should surely not be bought.
Supermarket labelling has not been adequately
supervised and many people are buying what amounts to Whey water when they buy “skimmed”
or semi skimmed milk. There is very little point in paying what they do pay for it.
Waitrose is ethical in its labelling but does not specify whether their milk is from “Free range” animals, merely describing it as “Organic”. Milk could hardly be in-organic, so it a weird name to give it.
The Coop/Somerfield is usually ethical but does no better in its labelling of free range or battery Cows.
Tesco is very poor indeed in its labelling
of milk.
The stress is on what is good for the “CONSUMER” and not what is good for the animals, and unfortunately the CONSUMER is satisfied with that.
Animal rights do have a case but it probably takes the form of Veganism as a blanket objection to general bad practice in the milk business.
The Consumer retailers make hug porfits on milk but the producer as always has all the work to do. The profit in ALL consumer ism is in the labelling and the “shop prepared food” aspect of the business.
So much consumer disease is caused by Consumer retail trickery.
Big retail Profit is the motive.
I am anti capitalist and anti consumerist for that reason, and may Animal rights business campaigns be brisk, but not criminal please.
I was amazed in the case of the man found guilty of selling battery produced eggs as free range that he was made to payback £3m to supermarkets who`d obviously sold the eggs to customers as free range. Nice little windfall for retail again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/8562434.stm
Apparently what we assume is freerange can be upto 40% may not be or be incorrectly labelled etc.,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/mar/07/crackdown-battery-eggs-free-range
The problem for farmers now is that there are few markets for them as the Supermarkets are the main outlets.
I buy local produce when I can but not enough farmers markets exist.
Thanx to Carl for actually reading what I have written. I’ve spent quite a lot of time in my life pondering the problems of dairying, brought up at a farm school as I was with about 50-60 sons of dairy farmers, throughout E+W.
The only real problem at the moment with dairying is the retailing; not that many farmers had the energy at the end of the milking day to set up the retailing /pasteurizing side of things and get the finance, and do the door to door selling as
they have to do.
Some have done, and have done very well indeed, and continue to do so.
they get a good price for the milk and a good price for the sale of it at the farm gate.
Skimmed and semi skimmed milk in the supermarket might just as well be labelled
Whey water for all the value there is in it.
I can not imagine why anybody buys white coloured whey water!
They might as well
be buying the dew
from the cud
which the cows do chew
for all the real
dietary value it has!
Check the Labelling carefully, in the SM, and precisely what is being sold and for how much,Lord bishop, and you will have a clearer idea of what the problems of the retiring dairy herd owners are.
It’s the fact that many are retiring that is also a problem of the industry, and they have not bothered to renew their equipment!
We did have a “national herd”. We now have national fallow fields, and not a moment before time!
Beef of course earns a pittance in comparison
with what used to be earned in the 60s+70s
on a diary farm.
Turnover then on a historic basis for a 300 acre, 60-80 cow enterprise would have been about £1m/annum (ie today’s values, with 20% gross profit.
On the same 350 acres today there might be at most 100 head of beef. I leave you to do the arithmetic. They might make at the most £30,000 gross from that today. 1/8th profit by comparison ,but very little of the work!
Dear Lord Bishop of Wakefield,
Sainsbury’s is a supporter of the British dairy industry and that is why, in 2006, we set up the Sainsbury’s Dairy Development Group (SDDG) with the primary aim of helping our dairy farmers implement efficiencies to become more competitive businesses.
The SDDG is the industry leading partnership between Sainsbury’s, 325 dairy farmers and the milk processors Dairy Crest and Robert Wiseman. We work together with six dedicated elected members from each of the milk fields around the country and these two milk suppliers in order to supply the highest quality milk to the Sainsbury’s customers whilst improving the sustainability and profitability of British dairy farming.
Funds from the SDDG are available to Sainsbury’s dairy farmers for investment in specific on-farm initiatives in the areas of herd health and husbandry, environment and energy, collaborative working and business improvement. In return for their commitment to the group, members receive a guaranteed price premium for their milk above the processor’s standard price.
The scheme has brought about real benefits to farmers including better herd health and welfare as well as IT equipment and free training. It has enabled us to work closer with our dairy farmers and better understand the challenges they face.
To date, we have invested over £15 million in the SDDG and in January this year, we announced our commitment to invest an extra £40m in British dairy farming over three years (http://bit.ly/bVEGwo).
Please visit the corporate responsibility section of our corporate website for more information about our efforts to support the British farming industry (http://bit.ly/EEQfH).
Sincerely,
Annie Graham
Head of Brand Sustainability and Agriculture at Sainsbury’s