So how much would you pay for milk?

[IWanders]

All the articles on the news is making me think, if the supermarkets put the price of milk up how much would you be happy to pay? I don't like the thought of harming our dairy industry and making more families struggle.

Personally I would be happy as long as milk didn't go above say £3.50 on 6 pints which is the size I buy.

It would mean having to cut back on other things to compensate but I am curious as to how much others think milk should cost?

The price of cheese has gone up. This is in part due to milk costs, but its more to do with the fact its is also the most nicked thing from supermarkets!!!!

(My mind is a vat of totally useless information some days!)

I am not surprised that people nick cheese when it costs something like a fiver for a block of it.

This is my cue to tell you that I paid £28 for 2 lumps of cheese (totalling about 1lb each) in an artisan cheese shop in Cheltenham once.

I nearly cried.

That cheese shop sums up all that is wrong with Cheltenham imo.

I would pay far, far more - although I don't buy a lot of milk. My grandfather was a dairy farmer until his retirement and I know how difficult things were for him so I have an awful lot of sympathy for farmers.

I suppose though it is easy for me to say I would pay whatever when I buy at the most a pint a week.

Some people use a lot of milk though don't they. Plenty of people eople are struggling enough at the moment to buy basic groceries.

Piglet all european farmers are smothered with subsidies are they not which is why it is a common agricultural policy.

To be honest, I've no idea but I do like the raw milk vending machines and then I also was very impressed by the farms in Belgium I saw a year or two ago with all the Lely robotic milkers and feed mixers and the floors in the cow sheds were spotless compared to the so called organic farm i once went to in the UK a few summers ago.

The thing I note is that the groups against large scale farms in the UK always use American farms as the bad examples of what large farming would be like but the large producers of Belgium and Holland are nothing like the american hell holes you see on youtube.

I pay 55p for a pint of milk in a glass bottle delivered to my doorstep from local farm.

I think that the Supermarkets should pay a fair price to farmers, ie above the production price, which they should shoulder.
This would then encourage people to buy British Milk, this supporting the Dairy Industry.

I am saddened that Fair Trade policies do not appear to apply to producers in the UK.

I am proud to buy my milk from a farm, but understand that this is not an option for many

Perosnaly I don't think any supermarket gives a fig about a fair price for milk. They are just trying a different tactic to the old one of a price war on milk used as a loss leader to get customers through the door. Now they say they pay a fair price for milk but they still stock and sell the cheese that is expensive and from the cheese producers who don't pay a fair price for the milk.

If you want a fair price for farmers why buy cathedral city cheese for example?

I actually think milk is quite expensive. Well it's not if you are single and use 2 pints a week like I used to, but once you have a family it changes. We are 2 adults and a toddler and use 2-3 pints a day, it soon adds up.

I think most dairy goods are crazy prices though. Butter and cheese in particular. It is sad if UK farmers are not making profit as I can't see prices maintaining demand levels for the long term.

I am a manager in a supermarket. A few months ago we ran huge price campaign re our reduction in milk prices (to match that of Tesco). Across all our stores we saw an average uplift in milk sales of 30%, certainly didn't hear anyone complaining about paying less! People are money driven, its the nature of the world we live in.

Also we get our milk from Robert Wisemans Dairies, we pay 42.9p per litre, and sell for 52p per litre, not a huge profit at all, surely in that case it is RWD who is being unfair and making the most profit, yet it is the supermarkets that are getting the bad press?

RWD ONLY make money from milk though.

Just because you don't get the lions share from the profit of milk directly doesn't mean you get the biggest profit at the end.

As you, yourself pointed out, sales went up by 30% when you dropped the price. Its a way of getting people in store. You made the additional profit on other items these people buy with their milk by increasing footfall...

It is a complex subject and its wise not to just focus on the raw figures, but to look at the knock on effects and not so obvious costs and profits and pressure elsewhere in the chain.

25% is a huge profit.

My ILs are dairy farmers (independant family farm) and milk a large herd (300 cows I think.) going back to the comment on drinking raw milk, i think I am right in saying it isnt recommended when pregnant or for small children not just because of food poisoning, but also because of TB. One of their neighbours had cases of TB on their farm and the neighbour's children had to be tested to see if they'd contracted TB. not a nice experience.

I have mixed views on the pricing issue as think the smaller farmers probably do need some support, but from my own experience, the larger farms can be fairly profitable (think each of four sons running a private car paid for wholly by business, all boarders at private school, all funded by parents through uni etc etc)... So not all living on the bread line, but do recognise, it's a hard job with long hours etc etc whether of not you are turning a good profit...

I've always understood the supermarket business model to be way beyond the simple profit on goods traditional model. I believe that supermarkets make their money from having instant payment terms from their customers (i.e. you and me, who have to pay before we leave the store) and 30-90 day payment terms from their suppliers. So for a period of 1 - 3 months, the supermarkets are sitting on massive piles of cash that they can invest. So by increasing the amount paid to producers (and, in turn, to farmers) they would probaly see relatively little difference to their overall profit. That's how supermarkets can sucessfully operate loss leaders....

The point made earlier by Dahlen is the key one - the overal benefits that farmers bring to the country are immeasurable, IMHO. And, from my experience of growing up in the country, I believe that the larger commercial farms bring less of those "hidden" benefits - ripping up hedgerows to create larger fields, constant growth of maize to provide feedstock for housed cattle (leading to massive soil run off, increasing flood risks) etc.

And finally, I believe very firmly in the principle that a country should be able to feed itself. As the world population density increases and competition for resources grows more intense, we are going to curse our loss of being a self-sustaining nation. It took a massive change in farming practices after 2WW to become self-sufficient, and I seem to recall it was only in around 2005 ish that we went back to being a net importer of food. Such a shame - these skills, once lost, will never be recovered.

Nothing. I will never contribute to the cruel, barbaric industry that is dairy farming. Certainly not for a product that is actually more detrimental to our health than beneficial.
More info here, here and plenty of other sources.

Actually, when I've thought about it, I find the idea that a supermarket manager trying to feign the idea that profit is based solely on the face value price of something, actually quite cynical and unbelievable.

I do not believe that anyone in that role has that simplistic and basic understanding.

I have just moved house and used to pay 52p a pint from the local farmer - delivered to my door.
I now do not have a milkman and so Asda deliver my milk at £2 for 8 pints - that's 25p a pint!!!!

I would quite happily pay more for my milk as I do believe in supporting the local economy - Asda you are a disgrace and if I can source it else where I will as soon as I can.

LOL at 25% not being much of a profit!!!!!!!!

Supermarket price wars are a nonsense and don't benefit anyone other than themselves. I remember at university we priced a basket of goods in a number of stores ranging from the allegedly cheapist to the most expensive. Average price was £30 with a 5% delta either side. The cheapist market the daily goods very aggressively but are often more expensive on the more luxury items, and vice versa. It's just all clever marketing.

Hmmm of course profit is not as simplistic as that, but for the purposes of what I was saying it is, RWD (or now Muller) is making more money than us on that product.

That said, we choose to deal with RWD. A mile away from the shop I work in (and about 20 others in a 50 mile radius) there is one of Scotlands largest independent milk producers/distributors - do we use them? Not a chance, the people who decide would rather our milk came from hundreds of miles away no matter how many times we ask. I can't understand why such a supposedly sharing caring organisation would rather line the german pockets of RWD rather than our local farmers?

TroubleIsBrewing - that is the problem. Global agreements are negotiated by centralised buying teams for large economies of scale. Unfortunately at the local level it doesn't make sense. But that's what we get for preferring the convenience of a one-stop shop supermarket than frequenting our local high street shops.

And for the record, I'd pay more for my milk. I already buy organic milk ... to be honest it was after reading that it had less mucus than non-organic. Didn't like to idea of any amount of mucus being in something I drank so figured less of it had to be better.

Surely it could work both ways though? Organisation is The Co-Operative, leading the way in CSR since pussy was a kitten, apparently, but they won't entertain local producers? They will go out of their way to ensure that a banana farmer gets a fair price but won't ensure that the very farmers who use their stores are getting what they deserve.

I understand about economies of scales etc, it was the Somerfield takeover that allowed us to drop milk prices in the first place with our increased buying power, but the Co-Op is meant to be about more than money. :(

Milk Price Breakdown

Someone correct me if I am wrong. So from the look of the chart on the right, the supermarket buys milk for 84p and sells it for £1.18 (using the example).

The 34p 'profit' is actually not a profit at all but is in fact margin. Out of the 34p I assume Asda/whoever must pay their staff costs, logistics, IT, marketing, store rent, security etc. etc. Unless I am reading it wrongly, the 34p is not profit at all.

It does strike me that the price of milk must go up and that outcome is inevitable. It would seem either enough farmers go bust or leave the market to push prices up or supermarkets raise prices now of their own accord.

Not all farmers produce milk at the same price. Some have higher overheads than others. If the supermarkets are paying 25p per litre, farms that can't produce it for that will go to the wall but this is by no means all milk farmers. I've heard that there are some UK farms that produce milk for less than 20p per litre and that the lowest can produce for 15ppl.

It's tough on the farmers potentially losing their livelihoods, and some of the reasons for one farmer needing to charge more than another may be due to matters that either farmer has no control over (Geographical differences for example). One thing that this does point to, unfortunately, is an oversupply in the market.

Also, in an age where many families are struggling to afford the basics and we hear tales of food parcels being routinely handed out, putting up the price of milk purely to subsidise less efficient farms helps no one.

Novack, Mirage is right.... am sure the systems you describe give better mastitis control on that system, but on a properly managed nice straw yard, with cows turned out to graze on well managed grassland I wonder which cows are "happier"

"heifers" are only cows that are in their first lactation so not sure why you think that they are more artificially bred than any other cow

also the time of intensive artificial system you descibe does not give cows access to pasture, apart from occasionally during their dry period.

Why is it romanticised for cows to be in a field? They are ruminants - they are supposed to graze!

Cows kept in the way described by you would have much shorter life spans than cows kept more naturally - how is that better for them?

Troubleisbrewing I am sure any dairy farmer would be thrilled to think that they could make 10 p per litre profit that IS a huge profit!!!....... particularly for doing almost nothing (i'e just having the profit on the shelf and paying someone to pass it through the check out!)

NoHunIntended- Your info is inflammatory rubbish that is a complete untruth for any UK farm. Although some of what is in that article has happened in the US - which is why it is so important that we keep a BRITISH milk industry!