MPs urged to campaign for British milk to stem trade deficit

The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) is calling on a cross-party group of politicians to put pressure on the retail and food service sector to buy British dairy products.

During the last 10 years, the sector has suffered a 1.5 billion litre swing from being a net exporter to a major net importer, the association’s chairman, Lyndon Edwards told the All Party Parliamentary Group on Dairy Farming annual meeting in London.

Furthermore, the UK continues to export commodity dairy products while importing higher value goods, he said.

“UK milk production has dwindled during the past decade from 14.06bn litres to 12.8bn l, a trend which has been influenced by falling farm gate prices and the increasingly unfair distribution of margins within the supply chain - retail share has increased from 6ppl to 16.5ppl during that period.

“Consequently, we are becoming increasingly dependent on imported dairy added value products, whilst being content to export commodity products and a diminishing volume at that,” he said.

Last year the UK imported 1.1m tonnes of product worth an average £1,818 per tonne, compared with exports totalling 865,000/t of product and worth a significantly lower £918/t.

The trade gap has recently become more pronounced. Imports rose from £1.53bn in 2005 to £1.99bn last year, while exports grew over the same period by a mere £42 million to £784m. The import figure includes cheese imports which increased by 50 per cent on the year to 300,000t, of which 135,000t was traded with Ireland, Mr Edwards said.

“UK dairy production has fallen to a 40-year low at a time when domestic consumption of dairy product is increasing at almost 0.5 per cent per year.

“Unless UK dairy farmers are given the confidence to reinvest, then production will continue to decline at its current rate of 2.5 per cent per year,” he said.

He said that if the trend continued, UK production levels could fall to as low as 7.5bn l by 2030, resulting in the need to import 53 per cent of dairy products to meet projected consumption.

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