Food for Thought

The Dairy Milk Team from TESCO may be young but they have shown this week, very clearly, just how much young, dynamic minds can achieve within the dairy industry. Tesco's support of the British Dairy Farmers is going to put much needed life-blood, back into the industry

There has certainly been some fresh-thinking going on and let's hope the move permeates through the rest of the sector. It has to...or we are going to end up with an industry of "haves" and "have nots".

Tesco's announcement is very welcome, perhaps we should have expected something like this when it poached Emma Rutter, the NFU's assistant dairy adviser, earlier this year (she's the youngster on the left).

It's certainly a canny move by the UK's biggest retailer - you have to admit, when Tesco does something it does it properly!

However, you have to question why it's taken so long. Tesco says the move is designed to help struggling farmers, but surely they've known how bad the situation was for quite some time.

But they say never look a gift horse in the mouth and I'm sure the lucky farmers on a Tesco contract will be pleased as punch.

Sadly, even when, as surely they must do, the other supermarkets follow suit there will still be plenty of dairy farmers struggling with low prices.

What will the co-ops do? There's no way they can match 22p/litre for most of their members.

I don't think this announcement is going to do much to stop the exodus from the dairy sector.

Tesco's announcement is welcomed, but only a small few will benifit from this, as we were told that tesco will select 150 farms, and they will be given a premium milk price to help them build a profitable and sustainable future. What I would like to know, what are the rest of us supposed to do. It is only the selected regional milk will be given more money, what about the majority of the milk they will sell from their shelves.

Catherine - You're dead right that only those supplying Tesco will benefit (see Andrew Shirley's comment) but it isn't just the 150 that get a higher price. The 150 will get somewhere around 23p/litre but the 850 farmers supplying the rest of Tesco's ordinary milk are to be offered about 22p/litre.

Just thought I'd clarify...

Regards,
Isabel