Farmers march 300 miles to London
15 March 2000
Farmers march 300 miles to London
By Isabel Davies
DAIRY farmers have arrived in London after walking 300 miles from Carlisle to warn the government that their industry is on the verge of total collapse.
Unless prices paid to producers for milk are increased, the industry faces complete meltdown, farmers will tell ministers on Wednesday (15 March).
More than 100 dairy producers will gather in Parliament Square to lobby MPs about plummeting milk prices which continue to threaten thousands of jobs.
Cumbrian farmer and march organiser Gordon Capstick said he was inspired by the Jarrow marchers of the 1930s who walked from Tyneside to London.
“The reaction weve had has been absolutely fantastic,” he told the Farming Today programme on BBC Radio 4.
“Weve had people coming out of pubs and private houses, clapping us and saying Good on you, at least someone is doing something.”
The farmers crusade coincides with a new report which reveals that thousands of producers have quit because of rock-bottom milk prices.
The report, prepared for the National Farmers Union reveals that more than 5000 dairy farmers and farm workers left the sector in the year to June 1999.
The long term picture is equally depressing – in the last four years 16% of the 26,800 dairy holdings in England and Wales went out of production.
A 30% price drop has left producers at the bottom of the European league table for milk prices. Prices fail to cover average production costs of 11p/pint.
But the fall in farm prices is not reflected in retail milk prices which averages 34p/pint. Producers receive less than one third of the price of every pint sold.
Ben Gill, NFU president, said: “We are paid less for each pint than anyone else in Europe, not even enough to cover production costs.
“If Britain is forced into importing milk from abroad because the dairy industry has been left to collapse it would be a national disaster.”