ASDA "pouring away our countryside"

There was an interesting comment in yesterday's Sunday Times by Charles Clover with a local interest.

Not only was he talking about the price of milk, but he said that his family "still owns some land on the Shropshire – Cheshire border – so it must be quite near to Audlem – which once had five dairy herds on it. Each herd was owned by families with children. Now there is one farmer milking a thousand cows. What happens when he goes ?"

The headline of his article was:

ASDA is pouring away the future of our countryside for 22p a pint

It wasn't just ASDA he was blaming for making many dairy farms uneconomic. Aldi and Iceland are selling at 22p a pint too. And Lidl and Morrisons are also named as refusing to pay British farmers anything like the price it costs to produce milk.

In contrast, farmers supplying on cost-based contracts for milk with Tesco, Marks & Spencer, the Co-operative, Sainsbury and Waitrose were still getting prices related to the cost of production.

The article said: "Events in China and Russia never used to bring misery to the British countryside. Our exposure to global markets has crept up on us.

"But in the dairy counties of the west ........ desperate men and women now wake up wondering when the Chinese will return to the powdered milk market. Will it be before they have to sell the herd?

"No one can survive on these milk prices, however efficient they have become. The price of milk has fallen to 22p a pint in Asda, Aldi and Iceland. Some farmers are now getting less than 20p a litre when a year ago they were getting more than 30p.

"Milk, which takes huge investment in land, animals and machinery, is now cheaper than some bottled water, for which all you need is a borehole and a pump."

After asking what happens if that farmer on the Shropshire – Cheshire border goes, Mr Glover points out that the knowledge of the land will go; the maintenance of the hedgerows, the stiles and the land itself will be neglected across a lot of the countryside.

And that, he argues, is down to ASDA, Lidl, Aldi, Morrisons and Iceland who refuse to pay a proper price for the milk they sell as a loss leader in a supermarket war.

He finishes by suggesting a cowpox and boycott of those particular companies. Strong stuff but probably very relevant in dairy country.

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