Killing British Farming - Milk

When I was a child milk was delivered in glass bottles via Electric Milk Floats. While it was a system that was run by large organisation/company, it was very environmentally friendly way of delivering this product and service. This whole system slowly became moribund as the supermarkets became prevalent and sold milk in waxed paper cartons, plastic bottles but more importantly for a few pence cheaper than the delivered milk.

The environmental effects of this change were greater waste from all the plastic bottles and no longer reusing the glass bottles that milk traditionally used. If the same system as used in the 1950s to the Early 80s was proposed today, it would be seen as radically "Green". However there were other benefits as spotting milk still on the doorstep was an early warning system that enabled neighbours to spot that not all was well with someone elderly. Many older people that had suffered a fall were discovered much sooner as an additional benefit of this system.


With the switch to supermarkets being the main supply of milk, there has been a constant downward pressure on the price of milk. For most of the past two decades there has been a tension between the supermarkets and the farmers. With most farmers not even getting paid the price of production. Therefore, we now find that we in Britain now have to import a million litres of milk every day, as farmers have pulled out of dairy farming.


While the economics of milk production is at the centre of many farmers having left the dairy industry, another important factor is welfare. As via breeding the modern dairy cow now produces twice as much milk as traditional breeds. That also means that instead of a cow having a productive life of five to ten years with traditional breeds, the modern dairy cow has only a productive life of two or if you are lucky three years. That is not because the cow produces less milk in subsequent years, but because the health problems of over producing milk make the cow uneconomic. It is only by constant veterinary intervention that a cow can be kept productive.


While it is not the supermarkets that are to blame for this, but they do benefit from this. It is part of the way that the supermarkets fail to deal with maintaining good welfare standards and by constantly pressing for lower prices, indirectly cause and add to animal suffering. Also this police of using products like milk as a loss leader harms the very producers, the farmers they rely upon. While it is possible to import the extra million litres of milk each day into Britain, the question has to asked is that wise?


Often the debate by those that exploit the Free Trade system place Fair Trade as and opposite to free trade. But Fair Trade is also free trade it is just that it fails to exploit the farmers and producers. For a perishable product like milk, it should come from farms as close to the consumers as possible. While it would be amusing to see dairy cows in the middle of London, it is not practical. Thus milk has to be collected from farms outside London, processed and transported in.


The situation now where the low prices paid by the super markets to the farmer, the farmer gets seven pence per litre, the consumer pays ninety pence at the checkout, has lead to Britain importing a million litres of milk per day every day. There is no reason why the consumer has to pay any more even if the big chains doubled the price they paid the farmers. As effectively they already have to do to get the milk from Europe.


The effect of the monopoly position of the big chains is that they are Killing British Farming. But not only that a good dependable system became collateral damage in the price wars of the supermarkets, a price war that has greatly increased the environmental cost of all dairy products.


What the supermarkets are doing is following the same business principals and practices that the banks followed. We all know that was a great success. The point is that unlike any other product, food is unique as no one can survive without it. Further if we destroyed our farming and agriculture we become hostages of the market. You only need to look at Zimbabwe to see that. In Zimbabwe they went from being the African BreadBasket, to a nation that can not feed its people as a direct result of the farms and agriculture shutting down. While there it was political mismanagement, here it is economic mismanagement; the effect will be the same.


If we fail to feed ourselves who will sell us the food we need? If there were to be a drought in Europe or flooding that interrupted or stopped agricultural production then how would we feed ourselves? Only by having a good strong domestic agriculture can we ensure we can cope with anything that Climate Change or Economic disaster, throws at us.


While I can not see us returning to the milkman that existed when I was a child, it was one that worked and worked well. As well as the fringe benefits mentioned previously, if we had to invent a good environmentally sound and sustainable one it would be just like the milkmen of my childhood.