An industry-wide roundtable meeting on the crisis gripping the dairy sector will be held in central London on Wednesday. Environment secretary Elizabeth Truss will chair the meeting, which will be attended by farmers’ representatives, government officials and food company executives.

The meeting is being held a day after trade body Dairy UK launched its Manifesto for the British dairy industry, setting out what the industry expects of the main political parties as they prepare for this year’s general election.

Commenting ahead of the roundtable discussion, NFU President Meurig Raymond said the NFU had been calling for such a meeting. The NFU president said union delegates will demand action in five key areas at Wednesday’s meeting.

These are:

• Support for the NFU’s ‘Leading the Way’ strategy for the future of the industry, published in June 2014. The strategy envisages the elimination of UK dairy trade deficit by 2025;
• Securing shorter-term support from government, banks processors and retailers to stymie the number of dairy farmers leaving the industry;
• Developing more balanced ways of sharing risk in contracts when milk quotas are removed, including more transparency from milk buyers, who must not use market situations to take advantage of their suppliers;
• Promoting the benefits of forming producer organisations and co-operatives, to allow farmers to benefit from strength in numbers in future negotiations;
• Improving pricing mechanisms to allow farmers to cope with volatility, including the ability to average profits over a longer period, and take cost of production into account.

 
NFU president Raymond continued, “For the future, we need to learn from successful models in New Zealand and the US where farmers can manage risk by utilising dairy futures markets,” though he added, “Now is not the time to allocate blame for what is a worldwide collapse in dairy prices but rather to unite in the cause of British dairy farming.”