Supermarkets milk rural Sussex dry

UK - The number of dairy farms in Sussex has fallen by more than 60 per cent since 1996. As supermarkets battle to cream off lucrative profit margins on milk, farmers are paid less for each pint than it costs them to produce it.
calendar icon 9 January 2007
clock icon 1 minute read
Ben Parsons looks at what is being done to avert the crisis facing the dairy industry. The price of milk has risen over the past ten years, while the price farmers receive for producing it has dropped by a third.

The National Farmers' Union estimates farmers lose 4p for every litre of milk they produce. As a result, thousands have deserted the industry over the past ten years.

At the supermarket checkout we pay about 52p for a litre of semiskimmed milk. As it leaves the farm gate, the same milk fetches just 18.5p for the dairy farmers who produce it.

Tight margins for the companies which bottle, pasteurise and sell the milk to big retailers leave farmers with little or no profit. In September 1996, there were 383 registered producers in Sussex, compared with 149 in October 2006, according to the NFU. Farmer Gwyn Jones keeps a dairy herd at Kirdford, near Billingshurst.

Source: The Argus
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