AIBU not to support the British farmers

[WitchofScots]

My Facebook is full of people saying they don't mind paying more for milk because they support the British Farmers.

If milk is more expensive then that's going to deprive children from families on/below the poverty line of a healthy drink, fruit is expensive, organic meat is expensive, ditto vegetables but milk is relatively cheap.

Lunch pack the thread isn't about whether we need dairy in our diets. The thread is simply about the cost of milk and the price paid to farmers.
I have a dairy allergic household member too and another one who simply doesn't like dairy but those issues are for a different thread.
I would like to pay more for the milk that I do buy. I buy my milk at sainsburys rather than with the rest of my shop at aldi / asda because sainsburys pay a slightly better price to the dairy farmers but I would like to pay more for my milk to support the dairy industry. I would happily buy British fair trade milk and pay a premium for it if it existed.

super if you read my post you'll see that's pretty much what I said.

In spite of being a dairy free household I still feel milk prices should rise and dairy farmers should be paid more.

Lots of jobs don't happen in the UK, lots do, but not in other countries. Not sure why anybody should subsidise UK dairy farmers. Produce the same milk cheaper, or better milk (organic) or go out of business. Applies to all of us, so why are dairy farmers different.

As soon as all the UK dairy farmers do go out of business that imported milk will stop being quite so cheap.

I think we would do well to remember food shouldn't be as cheap to buy as it is and how much it costs to produce

Which has been pointed out before, Crystal. Sadly some posters don't seem to believe it. Market forces and all that!

YABU.

Your post was deleted surly

Er thanks.

You gotta love HQ's 'deletion policy'. It really is a lottery.

Milk barely costs any more than it did 15-20 years ago.

If UK farmers go under because they're not even meeting their costs, then milk will have to be imported in huge quantities. Do you really think that will make it any cheaper?

No, you broke talk guidelines.

Caroldecker, the only way to produce UK milk cheaper isn't particularly nice for the cows.

YABU.

You are lucky the UK still produces something that is actually good (ok, Milk isn't as difficult to produce as computers, but oh well).

The idea of us importing horrible long life European milk is desperately unappealing.

Not cows, but a small farm near me has used a selective breeding program to breed sheep with fleeces that shed by themselves - because apparently it costs 50p to shear a sheep, but a fleece only fetches £1. So they get to keep 50p more per fleece, but then the man doing the shearing loses out. It does seem like British farming is really coming down to the wire, and it will be the animals that suffer if it continues. There will be no room for animal-friendly farming if the farms are losing money.

Lunchpack - the alternatives to dairy are pretty expensive (and often less tasty) so few people are going to chose something different on the basis of cost.

But you don't even need the substitutes. Dairy free is a lot easier than, say, gluten free.

We just don't bother with foods that need butter, milk, cheese and yoghurt.

There is another issue with importing milk (or any other foodstuff that we can grow/produce in the UK) - not only will it be more expensive, in the long run, and less fresh - but we will also be adding more miles to our food which will not help our carbon footprint.

And I know it doesn't apply at the moment, but the fact that Britain could be pretty self-sufficient when it came to the basics of food, played a part in us winning WW2, I think. Even with the Germans sinking ships bringing in some imported foods, we still did not starve. If we hadn't had a farming industry, Germany could have starved us into submission.

I'd much rather be gluten free than dairy free. A life without cheese sounds like a barren existence indeed.

AFAIk There is no subsidy for dairy farmers,

Farms are not some faceless multinational. They are individual people with families that rely on their farming income.
If they lose their business then they lose their house and whole way of life. Is that OK for the children of farmers?

Well you can say that of any business that goes under

CrystalMcPistol - it's not that bad, and I speak as a former cheese-lover. I have to avoid dairy for health reasons and I've never felt better.

(agree farmers should be paid fairly obviously)

coffee they may be Easy Care sheep. I taught a young farmer/shepherd and she loves her Easy Cares and they do look like sheep should, cute

www.easycaresheep.com/

My DC who is dairy free is also gluten free and nut free I'm used to it now but it is expensive and time consuming (to prepare 2 versions).

The war thing is bollocks - we imported 70% of our food in 1939, compared to 40% today and 20% in the 1980's.
UK farming exists today mainly through subsidies, so farmers do not innovate and change what they do to earn a living.
Read this on the benefits of removing subsidies, both to the environment, animals, farmers and tax-payers.

No, you broke talk guidelines.

Yes i know. I'm not arguing with that. What are you saying no to?