ALMOST six months after March for Milk at Murray Bridge, when dairyfarmers marched to raise awareness about their ailing industry, the Australian Dairy Industry Council is beginning to act on the gathering's key push - a national dairy industry summit.
Family First MLC Robert Brokenshire was met with a standing ovation from the floor in March 27 when he put forward a motion calling on the South Australian Dairyfarmers Association to formally request a national summit with the dairy council and Australian Dairy Farmers.
Mr Brokenshire wrote a letter to council president Noel Campbell in mid-August enquiring about the issue's progress, and received a response last week.
In his letter, ADIC chairman Noel Campbell said that as part of the 2013 ADIC investment plan, the dairy industry had identified key areas of work that would benefit the industry.
"One activity under this ADIC investment plan is a strategic industry planning exercise to agree on the dairy industry vision and a path of collective industry action to work towards that vision," Mr Campbell said.
Mr Brokenshire is pleased the motion for a national industry summit has not fallen on deaf ears but disappointed that the process is moving much slower than those who passed the March for Milk motion expected.
"It is important that there is a national summit to properly plan and develop a strategy for the long-term future of the Australian dairy industry," he said.
Mr Campbell told Stock Journal a likely timeframe for the summit was February next year.
SADA chief executive Ken Lyons contacted Mr Campbell the night after the meeting to convey the motion of calls for a dairy summit.
Mr Campbell said the reason it had taken so long to negotiate a summit was because the issues were "too hot" at the time.
"If we had a summit earlier this year, we thought we weren't going to look medium to longer-term and just focus on the issues facing dairyfarmers at that time, such as the low milk price, high Australian dollar and unfavourable seasonal conditions," he said.
"The intention was to have a farmer summit after the federal election, so now we hope to have some sort of farmer summit in February and that would load into the priority setting mechanisms.
"If the state dairyfarmer organisations want to feed information into the farmer summit it's up to them to go out to their members and seek that."
Mr Campbell said there were many key issues that had to be worked through.
"The issues are about costs on farms - we have got to be world-competitive because if the industry is going to grow it is going to be in exports," he said.
SADA president David Basham said he was pleased that the dairy council was planning to hold a summit, but disappointed that funding for the event was yet to be secured.
"I'm comfortable that yes, the ADIC needed to step back a bit from the issues at the time, but I think they stepped back too far," he said.
"Farmers needed some indication that things were moving forward and I think the six months just gone would've been perfect to get the funding for the summit organised because you can do that quietly."
* Full report in Stock Journal, September 12 issue, 2013.
