The simple plain fact is that dairy farmers lament the dissolution of the Milk Marketing Board when it was the farmers who both controlled production and what Joe Public paid for their milk.
Barney
Milk Prices
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Cider Boys
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Hi Barney,
Half the problem with farming as a whole is that the land is in the wrong hands. I would hazard a wager that of the 280 dairy farms that have gone out of business of late are in the main tenant farmers and start work every Monday owing a landlord his pound of flesh.
We own all of our land and we farm all that we have which is an incredible help in difficult times.
Strangely I have yet come to grips with milk being a world commodity and knowing full well how perishable milk is how it can be classified as such.
Where farmers from other countries especially France score over british farmers is that they are great users of cooperatives. Speak the word cooperative to the normal british farmer and the look you get is almost as bad as the rhetoric that follows and is regretfully unprintable!
Barney there are so many things wrong with british farming that it really is very difficult to pinpoint any one thing that would even begin to help.
DEFRA is in the main a very big part of the problem and wants the biggest kick up the backside the day before they all get the sack.
My milk comes from an independant farm/dairy and I pay £1.06. for 2 pints/1.14 litres and am very happy to do so and I feel that is about right. I would never ever buy milk from a supermarket at a cut rate.
The 'Farmer' you see in his new 4x4 is generally the land owner not the farmer!
JB.
Half the problem with farming as a whole is that the land is in the wrong hands. I would hazard a wager that of the 280 dairy farms that have gone out of business of late are in the main tenant farmers and start work every Monday owing a landlord his pound of flesh.
We own all of our land and we farm all that we have which is an incredible help in difficult times.
Strangely I have yet come to grips with milk being a world commodity and knowing full well how perishable milk is how it can be classified as such.
Where farmers from other countries especially France score over british farmers is that they are great users of cooperatives. Speak the word cooperative to the normal british farmer and the look you get is almost as bad as the rhetoric that follows and is regretfully unprintable!
Barney there are so many things wrong with british farming that it really is very difficult to pinpoint any one thing that would even begin to help.
DEFRA is in the main a very big part of the problem and wants the biggest kick up the backside the day before they all get the sack.
My milk comes from an independant farm/dairy and I pay £1.06. for 2 pints/1.14 litres and am very happy to do so and I feel that is about right. I would never ever buy milk from a supermarket at a cut rate.
The 'Farmer' you see in his new 4x4 is generally the land owner not the farmer!
JB.
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Motherwoman
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Barney, you have spoken what many rural people feel but never say as they don't want to fall out with their friends and neighbours. I can only say what I know and that is that a local farmer's wife pops over to America to do her Christmas shopping... and they are big enough to tie all the land up in a Trust and avoid as much tax as they can.
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oldherbaceous
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A good point about the tenant farmers, Johnboy, i think all the farmers i now know, own their own farms.....apart from my Sister in law who rents land and she finds it difficult to keep her head above water, as she only has about 120 sheep at the present.
Now only if all the farmers, would or could, tip all their milk away for at least a week.....I suppose the problem would be legal contracts and not all of them would do it....just a thought.
At least the global price seems to have gone up by 15 percent.
Now only if all the farmers, would or could, tip all their milk away for at least a week.....I suppose the problem would be legal contracts and not all of them would do it....just a thought.
At least the global price seems to have gone up by 15 percent.
Kind Regards, Old Herbaceous.
There's no fool like an old fool.
There's no fool like an old fool.
Most of the farms in our area are tenanted (part of the Chatsworth Trustees' land, that is Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale) but even there, my point made formerly applies: when a tenanted farmer goes out of business, the farmhouse becomes a private residence, but the land goes to another tenant farmer who then increases his herd, probably becomes more efficient and productive and the number of dairy and/or beef cattle remains at least the same.
Hi Motherwoman,
You seem to be amongst rich farmers which in UK at present are mainly arable farmers and their day is also nearly over due to again world commodity prices.
We make a fair income but our neighbour who is a dairy farmer and owns his own farm is paying his staff more than he pays himself. He has all the running worries and spends hours into the night completing paperwork for the bureaucrats and get a very minor thing wrong and you can forfeit the small amount of grant aid he is due which is nowhere near the figure quoted by Barney.
When bottled water is more expensive than milk per Litre in the supermarket there has to be something sadly adrift.
As for your farmer's wife buying her Christmas presents in New York well I say good luck to her if she works as hard as my two my daughters in laws
who in the last week I have seen spreading muck and scarifying and gathering and carting straw and this is combined with having six children and husbands to look after.
My daughters and daughters in law did just as your farmers wife two years ago they went to New York for three days and that is all the holiday any of them had during the year.
For those who think farming is easy think again the next time you put some food in your mouth!
JB.
You seem to be amongst rich farmers which in UK at present are mainly arable farmers and their day is also nearly over due to again world commodity prices.
We make a fair income but our neighbour who is a dairy farmer and owns his own farm is paying his staff more than he pays himself. He has all the running worries and spends hours into the night completing paperwork for the bureaucrats and get a very minor thing wrong and you can forfeit the small amount of grant aid he is due which is nowhere near the figure quoted by Barney.
When bottled water is more expensive than milk per Litre in the supermarket there has to be something sadly adrift.
As for your farmer's wife buying her Christmas presents in New York well I say good luck to her if she works as hard as my two my daughters in laws
who in the last week I have seen spreading muck and scarifying and gathering and carting straw and this is combined with having six children and husbands to look after.
My daughters and daughters in law did just as your farmers wife two years ago they went to New York for three days and that is all the holiday any of them had during the year.
For those who think farming is easy think again the next time you put some food in your mouth!
JB.
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Cider Boys
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I don't think anyone could advocate that farming is easy and only well acknowledge that farm work can be hard (as it is in any small business) but my point is that the market forces apply to everyone else and at present there is just too much milk being produced therefore prices will go down.
Dairy cows have evolved over the years and now produce far more milk than they used to when I was milking. It is the same with most things; we can all afford items that were once expensive because of more efficient means of production. There of course is a price to be paid in that fewer people are needed to produce the same in order to reduce the prices of the any commodity. Farmers have enjoyed some very good years whilst at the same time others, for instance in the building trade and in manufacturing, have had very lean years with thousands of people losing their livelihoods.
That is the way the free market works. For decades farmers have enjoyed subsidies and there are good arguments for and against the system and the figure I quoted of £28,000 was an average figure (some get more and some get less).
It is my belief that it will not serve the dairy farmer any good to protest by removing milk from shelves' and blocking self employed lorry drivers in depots etc. and saying that they are getting paid less than it cost to produce milk (based on their figures) when the general public will realise that many famers are in a much more comfortable financial position than the average person.
One wonders what would be the reaction from farmers if the thousands of oil workers who are losing their jobs because of lower oil prices demonstrated by removing all fuel from suppliers and wanted the farmers to pay extra for their fuel in order to keep them in work. My opinion is not an attack on any farmer (I have a holding number myself and farm in a small way) it is putting the argument that we all are affected by supply and demand and dairy farming should be no different. Do we want to see mass over-production of milk causing butter mountains again? Farmers need to realise that members of the general public lose jobs and businesses because of market forces on a daily basis, with no means of alternative incomes or subsidies except the dole. Dairy farmers who at present may have some sympathy from the public, risk alienating the general public if they complain and demonstrate too much. From my recent conversations with several local farmers my concern is also shared by them.
Barney
Dairy cows have evolved over the years and now produce far more milk than they used to when I was milking. It is the same with most things; we can all afford items that were once expensive because of more efficient means of production. There of course is a price to be paid in that fewer people are needed to produce the same in order to reduce the prices of the any commodity. Farmers have enjoyed some very good years whilst at the same time others, for instance in the building trade and in manufacturing, have had very lean years with thousands of people losing their livelihoods.
That is the way the free market works. For decades farmers have enjoyed subsidies and there are good arguments for and against the system and the figure I quoted of £28,000 was an average figure (some get more and some get less).
It is my belief that it will not serve the dairy farmer any good to protest by removing milk from shelves' and blocking self employed lorry drivers in depots etc. and saying that they are getting paid less than it cost to produce milk (based on their figures) when the general public will realise that many famers are in a much more comfortable financial position than the average person.
One wonders what would be the reaction from farmers if the thousands of oil workers who are losing their jobs because of lower oil prices demonstrated by removing all fuel from suppliers and wanted the farmers to pay extra for their fuel in order to keep them in work. My opinion is not an attack on any farmer (I have a holding number myself and farm in a small way) it is putting the argument that we all are affected by supply and demand and dairy farming should be no different. Do we want to see mass over-production of milk causing butter mountains again? Farmers need to realise that members of the general public lose jobs and businesses because of market forces on a daily basis, with no means of alternative incomes or subsidies except the dole. Dairy farmers who at present may have some sympathy from the public, risk alienating the general public if they complain and demonstrate too much. From my recent conversations with several local farmers my concern is also shared by them.
Barney
Hi Barney,
I agree with a lot you say but I think whereas a person working in the oil industry may lose his job because of falling oil prices he doesn't lose his way of life. The majority of these people have not studied for years to do the job they have just lost and simply join the ranks of the unemployed and look hard for another job. The same cannot be said for the dairy farmer who has the wellbeing of his staff and even more the wellbeing of his livestock and has maybe spent his entire life building up a herd.
Once his livelihood is gone all the studying for years also goes down the drain and if a tenant farmer he has nothing and prospects for a new job are exceedingly bleak.
All they are asking for is to be paid sufficient to cover their costs which to me is more than reasonable.
You might have a registered holding but I have no doubt that your money is earned elsewhere.
We always hear about self-sufficiency and that is alright until you have to put the first gallon of petrol in your vehicle to drive it to market to sell your wares! It then falls apart.
As a direct question what do you pay for your milk?
Farming is a very expensive industry and as an example I understand that our latest tractor cost £89,000. and after this harvest we need to change two combine harvesters and those are more than an arm and a leg. They will cost near to half a million if new so good quality second hand will be our aim. These will be brought in from abroad as the other bloodsuckers are agricultural machinery companies after the banks and landlords. Without diversification there is no way we could update our equipment.
In a way I am glad that at my age I have finally retired and this is the first harvest in which I have played no part since 1972.
JB.
I agree with a lot you say but I think whereas a person working in the oil industry may lose his job because of falling oil prices he doesn't lose his way of life. The majority of these people have not studied for years to do the job they have just lost and simply join the ranks of the unemployed and look hard for another job. The same cannot be said for the dairy farmer who has the wellbeing of his staff and even more the wellbeing of his livestock and has maybe spent his entire life building up a herd.
Once his livelihood is gone all the studying for years also goes down the drain and if a tenant farmer he has nothing and prospects for a new job are exceedingly bleak.
All they are asking for is to be paid sufficient to cover their costs which to me is more than reasonable.
You might have a registered holding but I have no doubt that your money is earned elsewhere.
We always hear about self-sufficiency and that is alright until you have to put the first gallon of petrol in your vehicle to drive it to market to sell your wares! It then falls apart.
As a direct question what do you pay for your milk?
Farming is a very expensive industry and as an example I understand that our latest tractor cost £89,000. and after this harvest we need to change two combine harvesters and those are more than an arm and a leg. They will cost near to half a million if new so good quality second hand will be our aim. These will be brought in from abroad as the other bloodsuckers are agricultural machinery companies after the banks and landlords. Without diversification there is no way we could update our equipment.
In a way I am glad that at my age I have finally retired and this is the first harvest in which I have played no part since 1972.
JB.