Milk Auction Price Increases Reflects Need To Secure Local Food
UK - Further increases in the prices at the United Dairy Farmers milk auction today is a reflection of how strong the world market is for dairy products and how vulnerable the local market is now becoming to external global factors.
7 August 2007
1 minute read
Ulster Farmers’ Union President Kenneth Sharkey welcomed yet another significant increase in prices at this week’s Northern Ireland milk auction. The average price for milk sold reached 34.66 pence per litre, over 16 pence per litre higher than the corresponding auction last year and almost 6 pence per litre higher than last month.
Kenneth Sharkey said; “Prices at the milk auction continue to rise dramatically, reflecting a very buoyant global market for dairy products. These recent increases have only now returned prices to where they were over ten years ago and are absolutely essential to offset ongoing production cost rises. It is also a very clear reflection of global market factors such as a shortage of world cereals, drought in Australasia and increasing dairy product demand particularly from China. This has been further compounded currently by adverse weather conditions in the UK and Europe. All of these factors combine to emphasise the need to maintain a sustainable UK production base not only for dairy products but across all locally produced food commodities”.
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