NFU President Says Consumer Support Vital For Dairy Industry

UK - NFU President Peter Kendall said today that it is consumers who hold the key to the future of Britain’s threatened dairy industry, when he spoke at the launch of the Great Milk Debate. The event is being staged jointly by the Women’s Institutes and the NFU.

24 April 2007

3 minute read

Europe

He praised the WI for their campaigning over milk prices and said it was consumer power which had pushed Tesco into paying its milk suppliers an extra 4p per litre.

“I doubt if there has ever been a more convincing demonstration of consumer support of the fact that – ultimately – the interests of food producers and consumers are identical”, he told his audience of WI members.

“We need you, but you also need us, to produce the quality assured, high welfare British food that you rightly expect to be able to buy.

“It has to be seen as the start of a drive to solve the problems of the dairy industry, not as the end of it."

“If Tesco’s move is a signal that the supermarkets have at last recognised that we have a common interest, then that’s great.

“But a milk price increase applied by one supermarket to 850 dairy farmers – however welcome and mould-breaking – has not solved the problems of the dairy industry.

“It has to be seen as the start of a drive to solve the problems of the dairy industry, not as the end of it. It leaves us with three immediate challenges:

to make sure that it really happens – that the extra money does get to the producer and isn’t siphoned off along the way.
to make sure the other supermarkets follow suit.
to apply the same principle to milk for the wider processing market, particularly cheese.”

Mr Kendall said to achieve those objectives milk producers would need continuing support from their customers, which was why the Great Milk Debate was so timely.

“The scale of the threat that we still face has been spelled out all too clearly in the recent Milk Development Council survey of dairy farmers’ intentions over the next two years, he said.

“This showed a further 16 per cent of dairy farmers are planning to quit and that we stand to lose 900 million litres of production; 128,000 dairy cows; over 2,000 milk producers; and £170 million of output.

“That in turn would result in the loss of hundreds of jobs either on farms or in milk processing and distribution. It would cause serious damage to the English countryside, which has been largely shaped by farming practices and which needs grazing by cattle and sheep to sustain it.

"16 per cent of dairy farmers are planning to quit and that we stand to lose 900 million litres of production"

“And because we only produce around 80 per cent of our requirements of milk and dairy products, it will mean higher levels of imports and a greater dependence on overseas suppliers – an increasingly precarious position to be in, in a world where future food supplies are looking increasingly uncertain.

“So it matters that we retain critical mass in our dairy industry – it matters to jobs, the economy, the countryside, security of our food supplies and of course it matters to consumers.

“But that will not happen unless we address the sort of issues that are being discussed today and agree a common agenda to which all concerned – producers, processors, retailers and consumers – can jointly drive forward.”

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