Dairy farmers protesting against falling milk prices carried out their fourth blockade last night.

Following actions in Shropshire, Somerset and Derbyshire, over 100 farmers blockaded the Cooperative distribution centre at Andover, Hampshire.

The Cooperative was selected in light of recent price cuts, due to come into effect from 1st November, though the lower price (30.4pence per litre) remains higher than that of other processors, who have announced cuts for a number of consecutive months.  

The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) announced on Wednesday that it is entering talks with leading MPs to share "deep concern" over the downward movement of farmgate milk prices. RABDF will meet with Dairy APPG chair Neil Parish next week; Parish has called a joint industry round table discussion with other concerned MPs to try and understand how the current crisis came about.

The NFU has also said it is holding regular talks with retailers and processors. However, the union is refusing to support milk price protests, agreeing with industry groups’ narratives that the downward trend in milk prices stems from international market pressures.

NFU president Meurig Raymond said last week that the union had stood with protesting dairy farmers in 2012, when "The UK milk price languished at the bottom of the EU league tables while world prices continued to rise," adding, "The market then was completely dysfunctional."

Raymond continued, "Two years on farmers are rightly angry and frustrated about their current situation… the drop in UK milk prices is putting major pressure on our dairy farmers." He said, "The NFU continues to hold regular meetings with all the main retailers and processors to hold them to account, ensuring any price rises go back to farmers and any prices falls aren’t used as an excuse for unfair behaviour."

Farmers for Action, on the other hand, maintains that the steep reductions in farmgate prices are not justified and claims milk buyers have been taking advantage of market conditions to inflict the price cuts.

Though the NFU's Dairy board chair Rob Harrison reportedly told the NFU Council that the direct action campaign is "idiotic," Farmers For Action chair David Handley has claimed that the blockades are already yielding positive results. After Monday's demonstration in Derbyshire, Handley said, "We need to intensify the protests if we are to stop any further price cuts and start to get farmgate prices up as fast as they went down."

All parties in the milk price debate have condemned moves by Iceland supermarket to reduce milk prices in store, taking the price of four pints down from £1 to 89p.

Earlier this week, the Landworkers' Alliance, a farming union formed earlier this year and part of the global Via Campesina movement, said it "Unequivocally supports" the dairy protests, adding that the LWA membership includes a number of small-scale dairy producers who, although not directly supplying to supermarkets, have been indirectly affected by recent price cuts which the Alliance maintains has been "driven by pressure from the multiple retailers."

Simon Fairlie, an LWA member and manager of a micro dairy in Dorset, said, "The UK has lost half of all its dairy farms since 2000 thanks to neo-liberal policies that benefit processors and supermarkets. We need a new Milk Marketing Board, or something like it, to stabilize milk prices at a level that gives dairy farmers a decent living. I support direct action. The original Milk Marketing Board was formed in 1933 after mass demonstrations by dairy farmers and that is the only way we will ever get justice today."

Farmers for Action promised further protests for later in the week.