Dairy Crisis Update - 20/7/2012

Dairy Crisis Update - 20/7/2012

A message from the NFU President (Peter Kendall) congratulates the farmers and supporters "who have shown support to our campaign to back British dairy farmers" . The full message can be found here. He expands on how the issue's profile has been raised in the consumer's eye, the NFU images of the milk protests (see below) have been used nearly 18,000 times and versions of this poster can be found here. 

The higher echelons of the NFU have been meeting with the various supermarkets and the milk processors and Peter Kendall continues in his message to state:  

"We are continuing our negotiations to get a satisfactory voluntary code on dairy contracts. Dairy Crest’s announcement that it is proposing to move to a 3 month termination date in supply contracts is a good step forward, although there are strings attached."

And he continues to state:

"Over the summer we want you all to lobby your MPs to bring in legislation on dairy contracts. We have legal advice that Jim Paice is mistaken in his view that EU legislation prevents us from having national regulations with the kind of provisions we would want; we will share this with you, with some briefing on lobbying MPs, later this week.

We hope that the retailers, food businesses and processors who are behind the crisis which dairy farmers face do meet this August 1st deadline in the face of such public pressure. If they do not then I will look to count on your support on August 2nd. Further details will follow but any action we support will be peaceful, legal but very visible."

In other areas, a French cartoon was reprinted on Facebook that shows the basic fact that the farmers get less than the milk processors.

Farmers for Action published their new for today by thanking

• Heather Morse of/and  Cowindale Feeds, Carmarthen  for laying on and paying for the coaches from West Wales last night.  Thats whats it all about, everybody involved in the industry pulling together. Thank you very much Cowindale Feeds.
• Highlighting ITV Daybreak for yet another ill informed MP regarding farm subsidy, as we all know dairy farmers do not receive a direct farm subsidy, it is linked to the land. I'm sure she will be educated in the coming days and weeks. 
• What a brilliant, well organised  protest last night at three venues.  Our FFA co-ordinators did a fantastic job, the guys down in the SW headed by James Badman together with Mark Evans  had well over 70 tractors plus foragers - Nigel Batten brought 2 coach loads from West Wales, so pleased that their long journey well worth it.  Yorkshire headed by Stephen Franklin also had a great turnout as did Andrew Hemmings and Tom Houghton in Ashby. 
• And at last got the eye of the media,  sure there are many who did'nt get much sleep, if any,last night.   Now we can pump it up, more venues to be visited in following days. Watch the Farmers 4 action website join in interactive chat on  Twitter: @farmers4action and also our Facebook page: farmers for action.  We all know we have got to win this one.

A couple of stories in the news highlight the lengths the diary farmers are willing to go:

• Hundreds of farmers blockaded milk plants into the early hours in protest at the price supermarkets pay for milk. The farmers - angry at cuts of up to 2p a litre - blocked deliveries with their tractors at plants in Somerset, Leicestershire and Yorkshire. More of this article can be found here.

• Hundreds of households will wake up to free milk delivered in secret by farmers campaigning for fairer milk prices. Scotland's "Dairy Godmother" will deliver a free pint of milk to 300 homes in the Edinburgh area early on Friday morning (20 July). More of the article can be found here. Thanks to Supermarkets: Stop Forcing Farmers Out of Business - Be Fair for highlighting this story.