The UK Dairy industry has been struggling over the past few years. Unfortunately, with a background of falling prices and farms going out of business the EU lifted the quotas on milk production on the 31st March 2015. This was reported in the press as hardly likely to effect milk prices: ..an NFU spokesman dismissed claims shop prices would fall much below the 49p a pint today. However, the price of milk for dairy farmers has fallen dramatically:
The BBC has been covering this crisis without any mention of its immediate cause - the end of EU quotas. They have also been playing down its effect by only mentioning the price of fresh wholesale milk:
The number of dairy farmers in the UK is falling to a strategically dangerous low:
Three features of this catastrophe for dairy farmers should be noted, the first is that government spokespeople and state controlled media are deliberately withholding the source of the increased problem, the second is that central government by the EU operates without any concern about the effects of sudden swings in policy on local industry and the third is that the UK is powerless to intervene because it would violate EU competition regulations.
We could just smugly shrug and say that "at least we will get cheap milk!", but this price fall is transient, once enough dairy farms have shut down the price will rise. What will have changed is that the UK will have hardly any dairy farms and our milk will be largely sourced from farms of unknown quality abroad. It is for the UK government to intervene during boom/bust cycles to preserve a strategic level of dairy farming but this is impossible because the EU is sovereign in this area of government.
Also see: Membership of the EU: Pros and Cons
Tinyurl for this article: http://tinyurl.com/pzxeobl
(Postscript: the French government has tried to intervene on agricultural changes but has been fined by the EU).
11/8/15
The BBC has been covering this crisis without any mention of its immediate cause - the end of EU quotas. They have also been playing down its effect by only mentioning the price of fresh wholesale milk:
The number of dairy farmers in the UK is falling to a strategically dangerous low:
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| Notice the kink at the end of quotas. Source: AHDB |
Three features of this catastrophe for dairy farmers should be noted, the first is that government spokespeople and state controlled media are deliberately withholding the source of the increased problem, the second is that central government by the EU operates without any concern about the effects of sudden swings in policy on local industry and the third is that the UK is powerless to intervene because it would violate EU competition regulations.
We could just smugly shrug and say that "at least we will get cheap milk!", but this price fall is transient, once enough dairy farms have shut down the price will rise. What will have changed is that the UK will have hardly any dairy farms and our milk will be largely sourced from farms of unknown quality abroad. It is for the UK government to intervene during boom/bust cycles to preserve a strategic level of dairy farming but this is impossible because the EU is sovereign in this area of government.
Also see: Membership of the EU: Pros and Cons
Tinyurl for this article: http://tinyurl.com/pzxeobl
(Postscript: the French government has tried to intervene on agricultural changes but has been fined by the EU).
11/8/15
Comments
It's the same people who want #brexit who'd wan't to trade globally and allow New zealand farmers to dump their surplus production on UK. They are the real villains in this story. Give them a free reign and UK dairy farmers would suffer immensely more.
Note that UK cannot feed itself and hasn't been able to for decades after the war. We need food security and that means short supply lines and keeping EU farmers in business by giving them some protection.
For my full comment I refer to
https://identityspace.wordpress.com/2015/08/11/disingenuous-uk-europhobes/