Dairy farmers- should we be backing them?

[Bubbles]

.

[~TW~]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02z7g3p

Should we be paying more for our milk to help out the dairy farmers?

What is the best way of helping, if you don't want your milk delivered for whatever reason?

Paying my supermarket more isn't going to help as it won't get passed on.

 Should farmers be paid more for milk.Answer if what they say is correct then YES.This should also be a concern to government as our farmers are important to us.

    ~TW~

     ~TW~

[Hope]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33857629

[L.A.]

The basic problem is that too much milk is being produced - while I'm sure that farmers will always be grateful to receive more cash, that isn't really the solution.

[Udayana]

Buy only organic milk? Demand would exceed supply and everyone, including the cows, would be happier.

[L.A.]

The basic problem is that too much milk is being produced - while I'm sure that farmers will always be grateful to receive more cash, that isn't really the solution.

Turn it into evaporated or powder?

The excess, to save waste?

Or maybe pay more and have smaller herds or as Udayana says have organic milk.

We can only use so much evaporated milk and by and large, people don't want expensive food.

[Anchorman]

The problem won't have a short term solution.
Farmers were encouraged to breed cattle for maximum milk yield - ever since the late 1950's.
Now, to try and produce a cow which is both a good milker and useful as a meat product will take quite a few generations - cattle generations - before a sufficient number are available for market.
At the momment, though, farmers are going out of business at am alarming rate - and some have resorted to attempting suicide, which is, of course, no answer - but, sadly, in Ayrshire
(dairy country) alone, this has, sadly, proven successful in at least three cases over the past two years.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The problem won't have a short term solution.
Farmers were encouraged to breed cattle for maximum milk yield - ever since the late 1950's.
Now, to try and produce a cow which is both a good milker and useful as a meat product will take quite a few generations - cattle generations - before a sufficient number are available for market.
At the momment, though, farmers are going out of business at am alarming rate - and some have resorted to attempting suicide, which is, of course, no answer - but, sadly, in Ayrshire
(dairy country) alone, this has, sadly, proven successful in at least three cases over the past two years.

Radical solution but maybe we should nationalise farming.
Unfortunately Farming is experiencing what mining faced and look at the Conservative solution for that.

[Harrowby Hall]

The basic problem is that too much milk is being produced - while I'm sure that farmers will always be grateful to receive more cash, that isn't really the solution.

Turn it into evaporated or powder?

The excess, to save waste?

Isn't this part of the problem? My understanding (open to correction) is that the real baddies in this business are the milk converters - firms like Muller - who buy huge qualtities of milk to do just this, turn it into other products.

It is the converters who are really paying rock-bottom prices The main UK-owned retailers (Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose etc) within the constraints of a market economy are trying to do the right thing, the foreign-owned supermarkets (ASDA, Lidl etc) are being less generous.

There appear to be ample supplies of milk for conversion. You would be just creating milk mountains/lakes.

[L.A.]

Radical solution but maybe we should nationalise farming.
. . .

That would certainly solve the problem of over-production - milk would be rationed after six months 

[Udayana]

We could try getting the Chinese hooked on Welsh rarebit?

In the absence of a new market, if we want to keep a British dairy industry I can't see that there is a solution that does not involve people paying more for milk and other dairy products.

if we were out of the EU we might be able to subsidise the farmers, but that just means paying more in tax elsewhere.

Best to voluntarily pay more in a way that benefits the farmers and helps raise quality.

HH: The converters will always pay the lowest market rate as it is easier for them to shop around.

[L.A.]

Isn't this part of the problem? My understanding (open to correction) is that the real baddies in this business are the milk converters - firms like Muller - who buy huge qualtities of milk to do just this, turn it into other products.

If there are any 'baddies' they must surely be those people who incorrectly forecast an increasing demand for milk encouraging milk farmers to increase production.

[Udayana]

Forecasts can always go wrong, dependent on so many variables. That is why we have a banking and insurance industry - however these days they are having too much fun down at the nearest bookies and no longer doing a useful job.

[Outrider]

There are no 'baddies', there's just market competition. The producers have increased their yields - and hence their production quantity - to try to maximise their income, but have created a surplus.

They complain about what they're being paid, but the buyer doesn't set the price in isolation - they're all trying to undercut each other, and the consumer is benefitting.

If some of them can't break even they either change production or go out of business - that's market economics. More farm buildings that can be converted into housing, and fields that can be returned to heathland.

Fewer farms results in less milk produced, balances the supply side of the equation with demand and we all carry on.

If the farmers, as a collective, are desperate for something to change then they could collectively decide to push their cattle a little less intensively, all scale back their production and balance the market, but they've all scaled their purchases, commitments and production rates on the assumption they can sell everything - basically, poor forecasting.

If banks forecast poorly we - rightly - castigate them because we suffer the consequences. We're lucky in this instance that the farmers have overproduced rather than underproduced which would have put our prices up. If that had happened we'd all be complaining, but this is still ineptitude on their part.

O.

[Nearly Sane]

The invisible hand fucks, and having fucked, moves on.

[Harrowby Hall]

There are no 'baddies', there's just market competition. The producers have increased their yields - and hence their production quantity - to try to maximise their income, but have created a surplus.

I do realise this. I was trying to answer Rose' point about using surpluses by conversion.

This already happening.

Among others, the French are huge producers of milk. Nothing exemplifies the folly of the current  nature of agriculture more than the nature of farming in SW France (where I am at the moment).

There are vast - and I mean VAST - areas of farmland producing maize, alfalfa and sorghum. They extend for miles and miles and miles. They are being grown to produce animal feed. The milkfields are further north in places like Normandie and Bretagne. A considerably greater area is devoted to growing animal feed than to growing the animals themselves.

[L.A.]

Forecasts can always go wrong, dependent on so many variables. That is why we have a banking and insurance industry - however these days they are having too much fun down at the nearest bookies and no longer doing a useful job.

The problem with farming generally and dairy farming in particular is that the producer needs some kind of forecast in order to judge if and when to invest in increased production. Plant and machinery and of course animals are a substantial investment and don't just appear overnight - so if prices unexpectedly drop, they have a problem.

I'm sure that there are financial schemes to allow them to 'hedge', but these do not tend to be cheap and will not fully compensate.

[Anchorman]

'#15
Outrider.
You hit the nail on the head.
If the dairy farmers have to shut up shop, that means the slaughter of pedigree herds (the meat is usually not suitable for the butchers' trade, and would simply go for pet food.)
The land - in my neck of the woods - is totally unsuitable for arable, and the only alternatives would be either sheep or beef farming - but lambs are selling at a fifteen year low at the moment, and to create a reasonable beef herd takes years - which means investing in stock in the expectation that the flatline prices will rise sufficiently in three-five years time to make selling beasts worthwhile.
To return the land to pre-agricultural use would be equally expensive....and a very, very long term proposition - how do you re-create peat moorland when the peat and surface coal were extracted years, decades and centuries ago?

[Rhiannon]

I wonder if the trend to self-diagnose as 'dairy intolerant' has something to do with the forecasts being so off over the years! I've even known parents stick their kids on soya - a potential allergen if there ever was - because some kinesiology set has to,d them their child can't tolerate it (usually Ali g with wheat, gluten etc etc)

[OH MY WORLD!]

Buy what they produce and also the government should be opening up markets for UK dairy product. The government tossing money at the dairy farmer is not going to solve the problem. The dairy farmer is not unique among farmers, the suicide rate among ALL farmers is double that of the rest of the country. ALL farming is a high stress, dangerous occupation. I know what factors are at play and it's not lack of government subsidies that make a farmer suicidal.

My adopted mom's father suffered terribly from the stress of it. I will explain a bit of what he went through and how I saw my dad handle the farming life a bit later. I have an errand to run before it gets too hot out. Should be +32 later.

[Hope]

If the farmers, as a collective, are desperate for something to change then they could collectively decide to push their cattle a little less intensively, all scale back their production and balance the market, but they've all scaled their purchases, commitments and production rates on the assumption they can sell everything - basically, poor forecasting.

I realise that the milk issue has been the headline item for a while, but in a sense, it is just the 'loss-leader' in so many senses.  Farmers who have sheep are also struggling with the influx of cheap NZ lamb at the very time that UK lamb is coming to its best stage, so there is a sense in which farming as a whole is getting a double whammy.  By the way, UK farmrs only produce about half of the liquid milk used in the UK - the rest goes to make other dairy products - which have themselves hit a problem since Russia stopped all imports of dairy, and China's economy seems to have gone into a degree of freefall (if yesterday's devaluation of the renminbi is anything to go by).