Welsh leader at end of tether

PEREDUR HUGHES, president of NFU Cymru, says that he has reached the end of his tether with milk processors and retailers over unsustainably low farmgate prices.

“I am not the sort of farmer who favours demonstrations, but I have just about run out of patience with those who are driving producers out of business,” he claimed during a visit to Nyffryn Farm on the Lleyn Peninsula in north west Wales.

For three generations members of the Davies family had invested huge amounts of money and labour developing their 180 cow dairy enterprise, he said.

But they were being seriously under rewarded for doing so.

He warned that the crisis in the industry had reached the stage where expansion of a few herds was no longer keeping pace with production lost through the exodus of producers.

“If more farms like this one are forced out of business they will soon find that milk is not an easy commodity to import,” he said.