Farmfoods agrees to milk price talks

Management officials at retailer Farmfoods have agreed to hold talks with members of the coalition group for fairer milk prices.

The move follows a night of protests at three of the retailer’s distribution centres across Britain.

Hundreds of protesters blockaded Farmfood’s sites at: Solihull in the West Midlands, Warrington in Cheshire and Cumbernauld in Scotland.

Farmers For Action vice chairman Andrew Hemming was at Solihull and told Farmers Weekly: “The meetings were well-supported and good-natured but we had reached a stalemate with Farmfood’s management who refused to speak to us.

“It was the intervention of the police who broke the deadlock. They acted as go-betweens with the company and that allowed us to successfully speak to Farmfood’s managing director Eric Herd.”

During the negotiations Mr Herd agreed to hold talks with milk price coalition members on Monday 13 August.

The blockades were called off between midnight and 1:30 am on 7 August after the distribution centres had been shut down for more than six hours.

Mr Hemming described the protests as “amazingly well supported” despite awful weather with 300 producers at Warrington and more than 100 at the other two centres.

“The coalition is as strong and resolute as ever in our mission to get a price that exceeds our costs,” Mr Hemming added.

See our milk price crisis page.