Milk!

lovethymini

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone knew which supermarket was the fairest to their milk farmers?

I prefer to shop at Sainsburys and also have access to Co-op and Tesco.

Or are they all as bad as each other for making our farmers earn a pittance?

frugal_shopper_2

It is a difficult question to answer as supermarkets do not like to acknowledge how they exploit their suppliers. The average cost to the famer is 26.74ppl (pence per litre), packaging costs are added on top of that some shops reduce the packing costs by offering milk in bags rather than bottles & pass the saving onto the customer. Tesco has recently agreed to start paying 29.78ppl which means farmers will actually make a profit supplying tesco for the first time in many years but they have only agreed to this price for 6 months then it will be reviewed again.
http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/.../37992.article

Farm foods is currently in negotiation with FFA (Farmers For Action) although since their initial talks in December there haven't been any updates published.
http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/articles.aspx?page=articles&ID=21457

The Co-Op is often said to be one of the companies that pays a fair price but they only pay 27.3ppl which is a very small profit but at least it means the famer doesn't make a loss as they do with many other supermarkets.

Sainsbury purchase 50% of their milk from dairycrest at the standard dairy crest price of 26.74ppl & the other 50% from Wisemans at 26.72ppl however they pay an additional 5ppl on top of that for their organic milk.

Morissons pay Wisemans 26.75ppl.

blackandwhitebunny

Generally farmers get a slightly better profit margin on organic milk, which is another good reason to buy it.

lovethymini

Thanks frugal, that was so informative. When I did a bit of googling it wasn't possible to get this much information.

This article refers to co-op but it doesn't give the overall ppl received by the farmer.

http://www.talkingretail.com/news/industry-news/robert-wiseman-dairies-wins-co-op-milk-deal



Farmers Guardian is a handy bookmark

frugal_shopper_2

smoker99 wrote: »

Please excuse my lack of sympathy but I live in the countryside and I've never yet met a poor farmer.

Poor farmhands yes, but never a poor farmer.

I have known quite a few poor dairy farmers although I only know 1 dairy farmer now the rest have either sold up, gone bankrupt or comitted suicide.
I still know plenty of other farmers who are doing fine selling other produce.

Dairy farmers throughout Europe are paid a minimum of 32ppl but welfare standards for the livestock can be far lower than in the UK, if UK farmers don't get to make a profit & too many go out of business then the supermarkets will start buying from Europe instead & all the extra costs that incurs will be passed onto the customer.

lovethymini

smoker99 wrote: »

Please excuse my lack of sympathy but I live in the countryside and I've never yet met a poor farmer.

Poor farmhands yes, but never a poor farmer.

Are they dairy farmers, Smoker?

Because at the price they get for their milk from the supermarkets, the farmers would have to have an income from another source not to be struggling.