Protest group Farmers for Action has announced on its website that it will be resuming direct action demonstrations in protest against freefalling farmgate milk prices.

The new round of protests against price cuts will begin tonight, with the Muller Wiseman plant in Market Drayton, Shropshire the suspected target. FFA is urging demonstrators to meet at the livestock market in the Shropshire town this evening.

Having posted about tonight's protest on the group's website, FFA has said more protests will follow. FFA has been gauging levels of support amongst farmers at a series of meetings over the past few weeks.  

Responding to the announcement, Muller Wiseman urged protestors to "stop and think" before pursuing another round of blockades. Actions in 2012 led to the establishment of the voluntary Supply Chain Code of Practice. Blockades were repeated in 2013, when prices began to slip once more.  

Muller claimed "illegal blockades" risk "inflicting further damage to an industry already under severe pressure from steep falls in the value of commodities like cream and butter."

Muller UK's chief executive Ronald Kers also claimed that protests risk "making the UK an unattractive prospect for investment."

Kers said, "Dairy farmers have been breaking all-time records in terms of milk production and the prices received for their milk. Farms in the UK have increased production by more than 1 billion litres of milk this year - almost an extra litre for every ten litres which they produced last year.

"Unfortunately this extra milk coupled with weaker demand has affected farm-gate milk prices. This is a worldwide phenomenon repeated in all major milk producing countries, and the imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in the value of dairy commodities reducing by more than 50% in just 8 months."

Last week, Muller announced further price cuts will come into effect from November, from which time suppliers' returns will drop to 27.1 pence per litre.

The Muller Chief Executive added on Monday, "This group of militants believes that markets can be affected by unlawfully halting operations and vehicle movements in and out of dairies, which adds substantial cost and makes it harder for processors to recover from the impact of this slump."

Though the group no longer has the backing of mainstream farm unions (NFU maintains that ongoing price cuts cannot be attributed to the actions of processors or retailers), Farmers for Action continues to assert that price cuts are not justified.