30/6/07 FFA's David Handley's article in the June issue of The Parliamentary Monitor.

DO NOT LET THE UK DAIRY INDUSTRY DIE

I hope that our political masters who take the trouble to read my ramblings about the current state of the UK dairy industry, do something positive in their actions to assist it and not hinder.

Why is a once profitable industry and obviously a major contributor to the UK’s balance of payments, being allowed to wither and die? To those of you who don’t know or would not wish to know, 2 dairy producers per day are leaving the industry which now only totals approximately 20,000 hardworking, underpaid individuals.

For the uninitiated, it was a politician who dismantled the co-op set up to take over from the defunct Milk Marketing Board. What made this notable female take such action? It certainly has seen the demise of a once great industry.
It has seen some of the highest suicide rates of any industry. Why? Probably because government departments continue to pile on the bureaucracy form filling, for what? It brings no respite for the cash starved dairy sector.

These economists who continually tell us we have to benchmark against the best should look further than their Whitehall corridors, we are the best but are still starved of cash, while a government looks on and sees their balance of payments within dairy products rise higher and higher. Please oh please politicians, tell us your master plan.
Leading ministers tell us its supply verses demand, then ministers why are we continuing to see our imports of dairy products rise. Those who wander around the corridors of power cannot be so naive to think that we mere peasants cannot understand how a balance sheet operates but then again most political manikins spend most of their time looking up their own rear.

So what do I think a politician could do to help, well here we go:-

1. Make sure the OFT does its job, at the moment they are seen by the dairy industry as weak, just not prepared to take on the mighty power of the multiple retailer who thinks milk should be cheap. An industry should maintain its infrastructure on peanuts? Remember feed nuts, get monkeys.
2. Politicians of all persuasions have said we will remove red tape; my question to you all is when? Could it possibly be when no one is left in the once great British dairy industry? Why does an industry have to be killed off by bureaucracy? If you don’t want us, have the balls to tell us, we are not clairvoyants. Why do you need to gold plate everything that comes out of Brussels? We know our partners in Europe don’t burden their farming industry in the same way.
3. The time has past for no action. The UK dairy industry does not want handouts, it wants direction. It wants to compete with the best in the world, it wants to export the marvellous products we produce but how can we – our hands are tied before we start. Our industry has been allowed by our political masters to stagnate, it has been prevented from profit making by major retailers and milk processors who one would dare suggest operate a cartel but yet we see no action from continuous government to act on our behalf. People have sat back and watched water become more expensive than a complete food product from which you just remove the top and thus help create a healthy population. We have young entrepreneurs out there who want to create once again a profitable dairy industry but they need to see signs from their leaders in the political corridors that they will assist them turn around an industry that after all will be of benefit to everyone including the chancellor’s balance sheet.
4. We need governments who recognise that in this volatile world, we live on an island with 60 million people who need feeding. UK farmers have the expertise, welfare and hygiene standards to provide food of the highest quality, which can be produced both cost effectively and least impart on the precious climate we all live in.

We as British dairy farmers can deliver, can you as a politician, hand on heart say you can.