To want to pay more for my milk?

[hillyhilly]

I don't want to screw British farmers but aside from a farm shop, I genuinely don't know where I should buy it.
I try to buy organic where possible and generally buy from Aldi though I do top up at Morrison's and Sainsburys local stores
I've looked for a facebook page but the one I found is not as active as it should be given the current focus.

Spring you'd struggle even more when dairy farmers go out of business and the price shoots up to way more than is fair because demand is too great.

Milk should not be as cheap as it is in supermarkets. I buy mine from my local butcher, who gets it from local farmers. Yes it's more expensive, but it's fair.

Perhaps someone could explain to me why someone who runs a dairy-farming business should be protected from the free market forces of supply & demand?

At the moment, the market is over-supplied with milk, so the price is dropping.

I actually symapathise with this argument to some extent (even speaking as a dairy farming person.

However .... just take a look at the title of this thread. A lot of people are happy to pay more for their milk to support UK dairy farmers. They would rather their milk came from the UK rather than being shipped from Eastern Europe. However, they are struggling to know exactly HOW to support UK dairy farmers and which brand to buy in order to be able to do that. Personally my heart feels full that the consumer is on my side.

So I should have added that the supply / demand argument is kind of irrelevant. The amount of milk is entering the market is not excessive. Farmers are just not being paid enough. End of.

waltzing how much is enough - my milk costs £10 a pint to produce (cos I employ lots of lazy people), so you should pay me £11?

Another vote for milkman. Not only is it a fair price, but they buy direct from farmers and if I want more or less I just leave a note and it happens. Need fewer supermarket shops/deliveries too.

I would gladly pay more, and never thought of milk man duh.
We consume so much though, our milk bill will go up but worth it.

Milk man doesn't always pay a fair price for his milk as has been pointed out with links up thread.

It depends on your milkman as to where they get their milk from. If they are dairy crest/milkandmore it's no better than the worst of the supermarkets.

So pleased you started this thread, OP - I wanted to a couple of days ago but didn't get around to it.

I'd be delighted to pay more for milk.

I do buy Yeo Valley or Coop organic milk as it is, in the hope that organic farmers treat their animals and land better.

We avoid cheap imported milk, eggs and meat due to welfare concerns.

Turn it on its head. Only shop at the supermarket that charges the most for milk. This week we all shop at Sainsbury, next week Morrison. Watch milk rise

I rather suspect that the extra 35p isn't going to the farmers!

Agreed. I was 'happy' paying 100p, and surprised that Lidl and Aldi dropped the price by 10p from 99p to 89p some weeks/ months ago. Swiftly followed by local Asda.

I would really like to know where the real profits are going - plenty of milk is being imported from Europe (I know from someone linked to a tanker firm here on Merseyside, who could tell me just the one firm bringing in a few tens of tankers daily - my guess is that the south and east coasts have more tankers coming in from Europe to supply the milk processors).

Part of the problem, as a consumer, is not knowing whether it is the supermarket or the processor making most profit from the 'essentials' such a milk. I don't know how many milk processing firms there are, but they're dealing with no doubt millions of litres / pints so, for example, if they were making 5p on each litre / pint, it would mean they are getting more profit than the farmers who supply fractions of their throughput. The farmers are hardly breaking even, from the reports, or unable to make profits that would allow them to invest in developing their farms / replacing equipment, etc.

Iceland used to charge 100p, upped it to 110p (back in 2010/2011 - I remember because it was when I lived in N Wales and left in December 2011), but when it had been 110p for a while, it returned to 100p (I suspect they considered the drop in sales [if they had one] was because people voted with their cash - not that I knew anywhere selling it cheaper at the time)...

UrbaneLandlord your business model assumes that the Great British public wants to have efficiently mass produced milk.

That means the cow equivalent of battery farming milk.

I think this thread has shown most people don't want that.

How many 'related fields' do you think there are for dairy farmers, who are mainly over the age of 40 and often have limited qualifications? When all those farmers are gone who is going to produce milk.... oh yes the eastern europeans thats right (WTF?) who presumably then will get rich off doing this (otherwise, why would they do it right?)

So if they do somehow get rich impossible , then what do they do? I can tell you now no-one goes or stays in dairy farming to get rich. No one is going to willingly work 24 hours a day 365 days a week without there being another reason other than money.

Farming is something that is in people's blood, its not just a job. It certainly isn't something this country wants to lose as a skill.

SOTR - "Watch milk rise" - maybe it will rise in price, but who knows where the profit goes? I suspect that if prices did all go up, shareholders would be happy while the farmers might get a small increase, and the poorest families would be suffering from the increase as they could least afford a 10-20% (or higher) increase.

Yup supply and demand ....
Large scale efficient producers of milk....that means we could have mega dairies like in the US - thousands of cows kept together on concrete indoors all year - automatically fed and milked - the very essence of factory farming...great.
And keep breeding cows just to increase milk yield - never mind that leads to health problems - pain and discomfort for them - they are only milk machines after all...
And all the while welfare standards are slipping due to the need to reduce costs - to be efficient... shame that cows are actually living creatures isn't it really...and being cruel matters - or maybe it doesn't? As long as we have cheap poor quality milk to put on our cornflakes...
I'm not a vegetarian - but I won't eat Foie Gras or white veal - because both can't be produced without animal cruelty. Milk can be and should be and would be if we are prepared to pay a fair price...

One of the reasons the price is so low and competitive is that supermarkets can import cheap milk as a loss leader. I would rather pay a fair price to UK farmers. I think the UK should be self-sustaining in basic products like milk.

The poem below is said at many a farmer's funeral. Sadly I have been to too many funerals of farmers who have suffered suicide or horrible accidents. I've also been to plenty where the old man was still farming at 70 - 80+ years

People just do not understand the bond between farmer's, their animals and the land. It's disgraceful how as a country we have become so detached from food production and farming

THE OLD FARMERS PRAYER?

Time just keeps moving on ?
Many years have come and gone ?
But I grow older without regret ?
My hopes are in what may come yet.?
On the farm I work each day ?
This is where I wish to stay ?
I watch the seeds each season sprout ?
From the soil as the plants rise out.?
I study Nature and I learn ?
To know the earth and feel her turn ?
I love her dearly and all the seasons ?
For I have learned her secret reasons. ?
All that will live is in the bosom of Earth ?
She is the loving mother of all birth ?
But all that lives must pass away ?
And go back again to her someday. ?
My life too will pass from Earth ?
But do not grieve, I say, there will be other birth ?
When my body is old and all spent ?
And my soul to Heaven has went. ?
Please compost and spread me on this plain ?
So my body Mother Earth can claim ?
That is where I wish to be ?
Then Nature can nourish new life with me. ?
So do not for me grieve and weep ?
I did not leave, I only sleep ?
I am with the soil here below ?
Where I can nourish life of beauty and glow. ?
Here I can help the falling rain ?
Grow golden fields of ripening grain ?
From here I can join the winds that blow ?
And meet the softly falling snow. ?
Here I can help the sun’s warming light ?
Grow food for birds of gliding flight ?
I can be in the beautiful flowers of spring ?
And in every other lovely thing. ?
So do not for me weep and cry ?
I am here, I do not die

Sorry, my previous post was slightly off topic but trying to get across the emotive side of this debate that some people think can be reduced to 'supply and demand'.

Good thread, I've been avoiding morrisons and buying from tescos. Will look for a farm shop..

Stop buying the cheap milk then!

You think people will? Not a chance. Wetting themselves on these boards over the astonishingly low prices of produce at Aldi and Lidl.

I'd rather have no milk than non-organic. And don't tell me it's too expensive for most people. I pay £1 for 2 pints of Yeo Valley organic milk. We only use a dash on cereals and the odd coffee. You really don't need to be glugging milk by the gallon.

They should triple the price, never mind double.

sigh

yes organic... soo much better than normal milk [rolls eyes] or perhaps it is massive market hype. Organic dairy farmers are converting back to normal milking practices in large numbers because the organic bubble is bursting and actually its just not that different to how farmers have milked for generations any way. The extra meaningless hoops you have to jump through for organic status these days just isn't worth the extra few pennies a litre.

IMO it should be mandatory for children to go to a farm and see real food being produced at some point during their education.

this is actually a really good article about being a dairy farmer from the telegraph

www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11341913/Dairy-farmers-son-John-Whaite-on-the-true-cost-of-cheap-milk.html

i think it should be £2 a bottle with 1.90 going to the farmers instead of 2 for £3 offers with farmers getting 24p

Tinks42 farmers are asset rich, cash poor. Like you, I've never met a poor farmer either, but then they are more tightfisted than a Lancastrian at a church jumble sale.

They can't really just sell off a field when times are tough, they rotate livestock around the fields (it's been a while, don't remember much, lived with a farmer's son for several years), they had beef cattle and whilst his parents went on a couple of overseas holidays a year, their sons didn't even get a day off, it was literally 24/7.

They did end up selling the farm lock stock and barrel though for a few million, and developers built a little commuter toytown on it.
They started out renting the place as council tenant farmers decades ago and then bought it on a right to buy scheme.

Nicely done.

Don't ever underestimate farmers when it comes to financial matters. They know how to look after themselves.

I agree with this so much. Dairy Farmers work every day even right through christmas and on these freezing mornings to make sure we have our regular milk and we let our supermarkets kick then in the face on our behalf. Its disgusting and its worse that we cant actually do anything about it because even if we did buy a 'farmer fair' milk it would only benefit the farmers on that contract whilst the others get screwed to the wire just because tge supermarkets choose to. They started the milk is loss leader, not us.

I was aghast to read that if there is a 'global' drop in milk prices they screw our poor farmers more.. as if we would drink milk that had been sitting for two or three days in a tanker from Russia or whatever by preference. Its ridiculous.

I've stopped buying overseas yoghurt s and cheeses since just before Christmas and I try to pay more for milk but its not easy without boycotting supermarkets for weekly shop.. so that is what I do as much as I can. I get milk from a costcutters or spar who both get from a small distributer (check as this is down to each franchisee I think).

I hate that this is done in our name when it's clearly the supermarkets fighting with each other.

don't believe the higher prices go to the farmer. When coffee shops started offering fairtrade products at 10p extra, less than 1p went to the coffee farmers, the rest went to the coffee shops.