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Word from editor
A word from the Editor
You only have to look at some of the prices being paid by a number of the smaller dairies, and at 22-23ppl it is easy to see things are far from right. Hopefully, the days of pouring milk down the drain have gone, but their legacy remains in the form of escalating ‘B' litre allocations, and while many would dearly love to turn their backs on their current buyer, unfortunately at the moment there is simply nowhere to run. However, to mitigate some of the worst effects of the service sector shutdown, a deal has been brokered to win Treasury support for some of the hardest hit producers of up to £10,000 a time. And although the actual terms have yet to be announced, it looks to be for income losses of 25% or more incurred over April and May, with producers supported up to 70%. Welcome this may be, a loss still remains a loss for those badly affected individuals. Collaboration In an a empt to combat the decline and stimulate the market, a unique collaborative grouping of AHDB, Dairy UK and the English, Welsh, Sco ish and Northern Irish Governments has launched a new £1 million joint-funded milk promotional campaign which will ‘highlight the importance of human connections' during the current coronavirus lockdown. It will run for 12 weeks and has one simple objective - to drive volume growth, and should, if successful, produce positive bene ts for all dairy farmers. In addition, the opening of private storage aid in Europe seems to have injected some much needed confidence into the market. Couple with that the fact the cheese sector is relatively strong and some processors are holding their prices until the end of July, then with a little luck and a following wind, the combination of the easing of lockdown and the market support will go some way to stave off further price reductions for most producers. But be mindful it will be a tough old road before the industry returns to anything like pre-Covid-19 levels, and there is likely to be more pain along the way.
Dairy Farmer June 2020
