Home-Grown Milk Supply Could Run Dry, Says WI

By Sally Williams

THE Welsh dairy industry will disappear by 2020, the Women’s Institute warned yesterday as the Great Milk Debate got under way.

Our “home-grown” daily pinta will soon become a thing of the past unless Welsh farmers get a better deal on milk prices, the WI in Wales said.

The Great Milk Debate began in London yesterday, with delegates hearing about the current exodus from the industry.

The WI’s 211,000 members – known as a force to be reckoned with after slow hand-clapping and heckling Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2000 – voted the plight of milk producers as their top priority last year.

They want farmers to get a fairer share of the money spent on milk in the shops, following a huge rise in supermarket profits from milk.

Marylyn Haines Evans, chair of the Federation of WIs in Wales, said it scares her to think that Welsh consumers might have to rely on imported milk in as little as 10 years’ time. She believes the move could have a detrimental impact on everything from our children’s health to the economy and the environment and is calling on consumers to support Welsh dairy farmers.

She said, “We all use milk products every day of our lives. It is a natural, whole food that we can make here to a high standard by dairy farmers caring for the environment and managing grazing fields and hedgerows, helping biodiversity and wildlife.

“If we import milk, we will be laying ourselves open to the kind of food scares we have seen at Bernard Matthews, where turkey meat was thought to have been imported from Hungary.

“It is important to keep the food chain within our boundaries to prevent viruses spreading.

“Tourists from cities do not head to Wales to see empty farm buildings and no livestock. They want to see lush green fields with cows grazing them.”

Mrs Haines Evans, a farmer from Carmarthenshire, said she used to be surrounded by dairy farmers. But over the past decade, many of them have been forced out of business and her local milk factory closed two years ago, with the loss of 250 jobs.

She said three dairy farmers a day are quitting and if this continues there will be no recognised dairy industry in Wales or the UK by 2020. “In 1995 there were 28,000 dairy farmers in Wales, last year we were down to 13,000 and there are likely to only be 8,000 or so left by 2009,” she said.

“The reason for this exodus is simple. Farmers are not being paid enough for the farm gate price of milk – this is a serious injustice.

“They receive 16 to 18 pence a litre, when the cost of milk production is 22p, leaving a shortfall of four pence – they are just continuing to lose money. In some cases, two or three generations of the same dairy farming family lost their jobs and were forced to sell up and move away.

“There is no longer any incentive for young people to take over dairy farms when they know they would end up working all hours and not making a profit at the end of the day.”

The WI’s message is starting to get across to supermarkets.

Tesco, which sells about a quarter of the country’s fresh milk, has promised to pay more to some farmers. And Waitrose is now pledging to give 100% of its milk price increase back to the farmer, meaning that the supermarket now pays its farmers around 23p per litre.

By paying a premium, Heather Jenkins, head of dairy buying at Waitrose, said the store enables its farmers to meet rising overheads, such as increased costs of fuel and feeds.

She said “At Waitrose, we have long standing relationships with our dairy farmers and have consistently paid a fair price for our exacting milk quality standards.

“In order to sustain these relationships, we are always looking for ways to pass on profits to the farmer.”

(c) 2007 Western Mail. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.