Calls for a levy to support dairy farmers.
A farmers calls The Dairy Code Of Conduct worthless.
And a very rare good news story regarding a dairy farmer.
Perhaps if Dairy Farmers all banded together and refused to supply Milk Industries they might be able to force some decent lift to their incomes via better gate pricing of raw milk. I wonder if the ACCC would see that as cartel practices or not but anyway the fact is farmers cut their own income throats by some who undercut others forcing prices to flounder at low unrealistic levels. I guess a levy would fix this but would the next brazen farmer then cut their gate price as they know they will get at least the levy and so sell more to the factories due to their low price?
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Some of the farmers are co-op owners. They sometimes do it to themselves.
Compare Lactalis (Parmalat that is French owned having numerous local brands)
to The Dairy Farmers Milk Co-op pricing offers for ‘everywhere here’
The two ‘references’ are offset by a few months. Note DFMC is not synonymous with Dairy Farmers branded products, the latter now ultimately owned by Kirin Holdings (Japan).
Returns of capital and dividends from the farmers co-op businesses are often overlooked when they discuss the farm gate prices for their products. As for the multinationals? I’ll not trace how Australian dairy businesses eagerly sold to multinationals excepting to note that is ‘our way’.
Those doing it hard are the small operations and family farms that cannot partake of selling out or receiving substantial co-op income.
It is broken in more ways than just the Colesworths price per litre and what finds its way to the farm gate through ‘price offers’ take or leave it, as it appears. A market is supposed to price on supply and demand; dairy seems to set a price dictated by the end retailers, adjusted by the wholesalers, and the price to the producer becomes what it will be.
Happy to be corrected on anything I got wrong.
It would as the dairy farms are businesses and are colluding to manipulate the market to fix the price.
This is the ACCC website on cartels…
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If only there was a simple answer.
At the farm gate if the price is assured does that encourage over production?
At the farm gate if the processor buys on the lowest price does that cause closures?
In the Australian market does a milk producer have a choice which processor to sell to, and does the processor have a choice of which retailers to service?
Is the real question for the ACCC the lack of retail and processing competition in the market place? The ACCC tried to answer this two years back. It needs 240+ pages.
To most consumers milk is just milk, niche brands and products aside. The OECD in a broader review tried to find the answers in a global context in 2004. It only needed 210+ pages.
P.S.
There’s no need to read all 450+ pages.
The two docs serve to illustrate the diversity and complexity of the issues.
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My wife had been drinking Pauls Low Fat Physical milk for years prior to Coles deleting it but every empty plastic bottle would have a large amount of residual calcium stuck in the bottom which took some effort to remove prior to placing the bottle in the yellow bin.
She now drinks Dairy Farmers Lite White milk, also not stocked by our local Coles, which lists a lower percentage of calcium in the Nutrition Panel but leaves no residual calcium in th empty bottles.
The Pauls product lists 175mg of calcium per 100ml whilst the Dairy Farmers product lists 118mg per 100ml but effectively the extra calcium in the Pauls product was totally wasted.
Perhaps because the Dairy Farmers product is actually made in Malanda in FNQ, they are simply smarter than Pauls.
I only buy Norco. I am on the Mid North Coast and am regularly informed by farmers. They would be the best ones to determine if my purchase creates a benefit to them. An interesting area that I am hoping to learn more about
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Hi Vee, it’s a little while since your post. Apologies for a late welcome to the community.
Many in the community are following what us happening with our milk supplies. Here’s another topic that you may find interesting. October Food Champions Challenge :What milk do you buy?
I’ve read the following.
It’s a healthy premium compared to the averages paid elsewhere in Australia.
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I only buy regular cows milk [Betta] if i want to make soft cheese or yoghurt. I buy almond, oat or coconut milk for drinking / coffee - whatever brand is cheapest - because I hate the taste of homogenised milk. I live alone, so not enough of a ‘purist’ to bother with fresh from the farm.
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I buy Norco Skim milk from Aldi or Dairy Farmers Light milk from Coles.
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Hi Everyone,
I am new to this Community Forum, but a Choice subscriber on and off for the past 10 years.
I purchase milk that is NOT supermarket branded; This is because of the ongoing milk war prices between the two major supermarkets in Victoria bringing down the price of milk to an unsustainable level and attempting to monopolise the industry.
The outcome of this behaviour is a lack of income and loss of competition. But most importantly, it is causing an ever-increasing number of our wonderful farmers to give up the land and the work that has shaped their lives and generations of their family’s lives for, in general, many decades.
Being Lactose Intolerant, I occasionally purchase Zymil lite milk, but mostly the choice of champions is Macadamia, Oat, Rice or Coconut milk. And Riverina full cream or Farmers Own for one of my sons who can take lactose.
Thankyou.
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Bega has bought back the farm.
Great stuff.
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Another article on the Bega take over.
I will drink to that.
At least at breakfast time.
Woollies announces a new grant program for their milk suppliers as well as extending the 10 cent levy.
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A decade or more ago, having come back to Canberra to make it possible for my aged mother to live out her last years in the family home rather than be strong-armed into a nursing home, I was shopping in my local Woolies and found a nervous young woman at a stand in the dairy aisle offering samples of A2 milk in shot glasses against samples of another branded milk (but not, unsurprisingly, Woolworths’ Home Brand).
I tried the other brand first, and found it typical of homogenised milk from black-and-white cows. I then tried the A2 milk, and was immediately struck by a (delicious) flavour I had been denied since the ACT’s overlords in 1973 banned its sale in the ACT in favour of a government-owned monopoly for the black-and-white kind.
I was shocked at the price of the A2 milk, but wanting to try this test on my mother at home, I bought a one-litre bottle.
When I got home, I poured a small amount into a small glass and took it in to my mother (who was watching tennis on the TV at the time, ironically enough) without saying anything about why I wanted her to try it.
“Good heavens,” she said. “It’s Bega milk! How wonderful!” (The Bega Cooperative were a group of South Coast dairy farmers whose herds were uniformly Jersey cows, and whose milk, apart from having only the A2 protein and none of the A1 protein thought by some to cause certain health problems, simply tasted so much better than that from Friesian cows whose milk does contain the A1 protein. They were dealt a financial blow by the decision to ban their milk from sale in the ACT, but they were just Country Party voters, so who cared?).
So our little household became A2 milk drinkers despite my wincing every time at the price (and I suspect little of that premium goes to the dairy farmers who manage those herds of brown cows). And now my mother is no longer with us, that choice remains.
Why advertising for A2 milk makes no mention of its superior flavour has always been a mystery to me.
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Queensland business to launch their revolutionary new milk that stays fresh for 60 days.
Norco increases payments to its suppliers.
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Russian scientists are developing lactose free cows.
