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?

type of system you describe

I've just paid £1.47 for 4 pints, which I think is a bargain.

yes i would pay more.

I did buy Duchy organic milk today. don't know if the farmers receive a fairer price for that.

it is very short sighted of the supermarkets to do this to the farmers and if we have fair trade for other things, then why not fair trade for our own products.

I stayed in a caravan on a brilliant dairy farm and got to watch the milking and stuff taking place. If I could buy my milk solely from that farmer i'd pay a lot more. Sadly it's too far away for me to do that.

Surely there should be a governmental obligation to ensure that Dairy Farmers are paid according at least to NMW standards, so they must be paid a certain price per litre of milk according to the costs and then on top of that an adequate amount to ensure their work (12 hours a day EVERY day) is also recompensed?

One thing that this does point to, unfortunately, is an oversupply in the market.

No it doesn't. It could point to an imbalance of power between supplier and buyer too...

Cazboldy even grass grazed cows don't get out to the pastures when it is wet unless you want a churned up pasture. I purely used heifers as I forgot that it only applies to first lactation. Lely do have a good robot that 'fetches' the cows from the pasture and the automatic shedding gates allow the cows out to the pasture if they have milked recently.

Correct me if I assume wrong but not many farmers keep cows for more than maybe an average of 5 or 6 lactations whether in a field or a shed whether robot or human milk parlour. No farmer keeps a low yielding cow and robot milk herds average more milkings a day as they decide themselves when they want to be milked and yield more milk like for like sine obviously if you want more solids you milk less anyway but like for like robot herds produce more milk with more time for herd management and welfare no?

I say it is romanticised for cows to be in a field because cows are only about 10000 years old as a species and the breeds that are common for milk are purely bred for yield and not for the climate. Holsteins are not bred for Welsh or Scottish winters are they but they are bred for their high milk yield that far outstrips the requirement of a calve, no?

Nearly every farmer I've met always says a happy cow is a good yielding cow and low yield is a good indicator of stress. As for straw yards as you say a good straw yard would be good but straw is very hard to keep unsoiled and straw and muck is very bad for feet.

The low countries only get about 1p per litre more on average than the Uk farmers and the larger producers there make a handsome profit and find 500 head herds more sensible so why do the british farmers not want that too.

Is it not more the case that for decades whilst picking up euro CAP cash many farmers did not use any or set aside money for long term upgrades for parlours etc. and now they are uneconomically viable because of market forces they are complaining and looking for aid.

yes obviously about the wet weather, but I would say that 6 months of the year turnout is preferable to none!

all the robots i have seen work on the system that the cows have to come through every so often to access food, some come through twice a day some 4 times. how does it "fetch" them from pasture

no most farmers don't keep cows that long..... because they are not fit to produce milk after 6 lactations, because holsteins producing upwards of 50l per day cannot get back in calf, or their udders get too large, or they get lame from a very high protein etc diet that they are unnaturally fed to produce so much more milk.

which would you prefer? an ayrshire for example (like one we have) about to have her 8th calf, mainly grass fed, produces 7-8 000l per year and gets back in calf easily, is good enough to take an show at the county show, and is probably good for another 4 calves,

or a holstein that produces 10 -12000l per year,and is knackered after 2 calves. Which is more profitable? which is better cared for? which is happier? (despite the difference in their yields!)

Happy/Unhappy if a cow is bred to produce milk, and fed to produce milk then that is what it will do! I wonder which is under more stress!

Also it depends if you feel that milking cows should be like a factory production line, or not.

Most farmers/herdsmen would say that the milking parlour is an ideal place to manage the herd, and look at welfare. When better to see a lame cow/depressed milk yield/loss of appetite than when they come through the parlour?

How much does a robot care? Also a large percentage of cows that have imperfact udders ( with teats that are not perfectly placed) are not able to be milked by a robot.

If you said to my dh, he no longer needed to milk the cows, but could just manage his cows via the computer he would hate it!

With regards to your last point about re - investment. I agree whole heartedly!

sorry for the essay!

Pay more? Are you kidding? Do you all have too much money?

Thanks for your opinions Cazboldy. Could chat about this til the cows come home. :)

Is that a polite way of agreeing to disagree?

I don't want to pay more for anything but I think it's offensive that farmers are being paid less for the milk than it costs to produce it. Someone somewhere along the line has got to put their hand in their pocket or there will be no dairy farmers left in the country then that'll be something else that we don't produce in the UK and need to import.

I would pay as much as it would take to give farmers a comfortable and reasonable (as opposed to ridiculous) profit.

caz, you can't change biology, cows are the same in the UK as they are in the US: they need to give birth to a calf in order to lactate. That milk is for their calf, so to make enough milk for humans, calves have to be taken away and killed for veal if male, or chucked back into the milking cycle if female. Then that mother cow is milked for all she is worth, then forcibly impregnated several more times so her lactating may continue, until she is knackered and of no financial use to the farmer, then killed.
Plus, health-wise, you can choose to ignore all the information available, but studies show dairy is far more damaging to us than it is beneficial. But you are protecting your business, right!

We don't need to produce it or import it at all, RadioRental. We do not need dairy products to be healthy. We do not need them to feel full.

No. But I do think that the Lely robots are fantastic and are the way ahead and are finally being set up more and more in the UK now. I also think that your level of husbandry is probably higher than many and I certainly don't think a farmer who invests in the robotic machines would do so to then just leave his cows lying in mess all day either. Indeed I understood the beauty of the system to be that the computer etc can identify the cows in ned of attention and the farmer is realeased from the parlour for more time to be able to spend that with the cows needing attention or his family.

Sadly I think, as I wrote earlier many of the complainers have done nothing to keep there business up to date or have allowed themselves to become overburdened through poor financial management and are now using this latest thing as an excuse to bleat.

I like milk NoHun. Sorry.

but all that stuff about being injected with hormones etc...

and chaining calfs in pens for veal?

complete rubbish!

actually, we use a lot of sex selected semen, so that we have a much higher proportion of heifers born so that there are many fewer male calves we don't need.

as for what you say about dietary needs - each to their own as far as I am concerned!

Novack - will investigate your wonder robots

I'm so in agreement with you Cazboldy apart from anything else i don't think many things look as happy as a cow let out to grass for the first time. I'm just a pretend farmer (hand milking demonstrations etc) but i don't think treating any living animal as if it were on a production line is ever a good idea.

I do love a nice bit of veal. It's a shame the ferry ports let themselves get bullied by the tiny minority of activists a decade or so ago or else UK farmers may have been in a better place to take the lower milk prices now. I also go to the corrida de torros every other week at this time of year.

Hohun how do you think the UK farms could provide enough food for everyone if they stopped dairy and meat production considering the fisheries are overfished at the moment.

Ah - now there I definitely have to disagree

Live Exports! Urgh

veal - have a nice bit of BRITISH rose veal

I would pay more - it is too cheap in the supermarkets. Far too cheap.

Very much with cazboldy. UK cows in general have a very high standard of living. I do not want milk from a cow penned into six square metres, stuck on deep sand and milked 3 times a day ( having been selectively bred in the first place to hyperlactate but for only a few years).
You can drive for ever in the netherlands etc and never see a cow , round here they are out grazing looking chilled and happy. Yes of course the cow is an animal of selective breeding, but it is still one designed to graze.

I rather think some of you are living in a Mumsnet bubble if you really think the majority of the British public would pay significantly more for their milk. There have been surveys done where people say they would pay 5p more per pint but in reality a lot of people are really struggling at the moment.

There was a survey out this week that said the average British family has about £150 per month disposable income after essentials are paid for. If it is a choice between paying more for milk or any other food product and Christmas presents for my children I know which I would choose.

We do need a sustainable dairy industry and we ought to be self sufficient in liquid milk and other dairy products but propping up inefficient dairy farmers is not the way forward. The figures given out for the average cost of production of milk are just that, averages. There are many farmers who can produce milk below these figures without compromising animal welfare.

There is a massive issue with sustainable food production in this country and more generally worldwide. We need to produce more food for more people more efficiently. if we are to do this we need to make some difficult choices and there will be compromises to be made, simply propping up inefficient 20th century models of production isn't sustainable in the long-term.