Following a NSW parliamentary inquiry’s scorching criticism of retail milk discounting, peak dairy farmer bodies are planning a combined campaign aimed at breaking the eight-year-old $1 a litre milk deadlock.
The national move coincides with strong shopper responses supporting drought fundraising initiatives which temporarily added 10 cents/litre to certain discount supermarket lines.
Farmer organisations are now looking at how to persuade retailers to get serious about generating better returns on milk sales all the time.
Talks commenced in Melbourne just as the NSW Parliament’s Legislative Council recent damning report declared raw milk costs paid to the state’s dairy farmers were inadequate to cover production costs or allow reasonable farm profits – even in non-drought seasons.
Leading a 14-point recommendation and findings list was the parliamentary inquiry committee’s assessment that “a retail price of $1/litre for drinking milk has removed considerable value from the dairy value chain”.
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