Boosted by £100,000 of cash from the Scottish Government, dairy farmers who packed Lanark Market yesterday threw their weight behind a new organisation aimed at improving their negotiating strength.
NFU Scotland vice-chairman of the milk committee, Rory Christie, said producers may have gained a short-term win in persuading retailers and processors into abandoning their planned price cuts but he wanted to see a positive long-term outcome that would result in a profitable dairy industry.
The new organisation, to be called Dairy Farmers Together, would, he hoped, initially attract support from every milk producer in Scotland and from there every farmer in Great Britain.
It would provide a long-term sense of solidarity such as producers have experienced in the protests and demonstrations of the past few weeks.
With more than 500 farmers from all over Scotland, plus a busload from Wales and a dozen or so from England and Northern Ireland, hanging onto his every word, Christie stated this collaborative approach would also provide a much stronger negotiating platform for producers who have been price takers up until now.
Speaking immediately after Christie, Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary,Richard Lochhead announced that £100,000 of backing would be given to Dairy Farmers Together initiative and the money was available “now”.
Lochhead not only announced the cash to look at more co-operation, he also promised the government would look into the ethics and practices of the major retailers in their buying policies – and he made it clear he was not just referring to milk purchasing.
He also promised to look at having a statutory code of conduct for those operating in the milk chain if the voluntary one preferred by the UK government failed to materialise. The meeting, including the Welsh contingent, rose to its feet in support of his words.
There was, however, a slight hiccup in a meeting which was otherwise solidly supporting every comment on working together and that, surprisingly, came from David Handley, the driving force behind the Farmers For Action (FFA) group which has been credited with much of the success of the recent protests.
He did not want to see another organisation being set up as he believed the coalition of effort between FFA, the unions north and south of the Border and other bodies, such as the Tenant Farmers Association, could do all that was needed in future.
Any new organisation would be an added financial burden on dairy farmers, he claimed.
Handley had earlier also had the meeting applauding his intent to get the retailers and processors to pay back the price reduction they carried out in June.
He was not content they had just rescinded their planned price cut for August and said that protests and demonstrations on phase two of the action would start next week.
In opening, the meeting Nigel Miller, NFU Scotland president, estimated the reversal in the price costs had left UK dairy farmers up to £140 million better off but with rising feed costs he warned there was much more to be done to drive milk prices to a level this autumn where dairy farming families could start investing in their businesses and planning for a future that involved milking cows.
