Dairy farmers blockade Morrisons' Wakefield depot


How much do you pay for your milk? I buy mine from the milkman and pay £1.27 for two pints. Now much of that could end up with Dairycrest rather than the farmer, but it does also mean that they have scope to pay farmers more.

I think mines between £1-1.20 for 4 pints from Asda

I got an emergency 4 pint from Asda for £1, which is very cheap and I wonder how the farmers make any money if you accept that there is the cost of the bottle and profit margins in there for both the store and middle men.

The answer is : they don't. The number of bankruptcies in the dairy farming sector in the last 10 years is bordering on scary. Meanwhile Tescos make 2 billion pounds a quarter. Capitalism at it's finest.

Maybe we need to protect our dairy farmers with Fairtrade milk?

and the consumer is so upset and angry about it they are storming the stores and demanding that the price of milk goes up... Its not just the fault of companies like Tescos, Morrisons, sainsburys et al but also us the consumer. There are plenty of alternatives but we as a group go for the cheapest option. time and time again.

Speak for yourself. I do agree with you. The majority of consumers go for the cheapest option. I could not believe that supermarkets sold milk for so little, 4 pints for £1 is too low.

Actually the price of milk has been going up - the costs at each step in the chain have been rising and it's been passed on to the consumer by the retailers. However, the retailers haven't renegotiated their contracts with the dairy farmers, so they haven't been getting any extra money despite their costs and the price to the consumer both rising. The bare fact is Tescos is making massive profits while the producers are going out of business in droves.


Actually, we go for the most convenient option. People started going to supermarkets not because they were cheap - at the beginning they weren't any cheaper than anyone else - but because they allow people to buy all their groceries in one place, rather than having to go to a baker, butcher, greengrocer etc. As the supermarkets then reached a dominant position they used that state to negotiate better deals from suppliers which allowed them to provide cheaper goods while maintaining profit levels, thus accelerating the process - it was basically kind of a positive feedback loop, they used the advantage their size gave them to get bigger, thus gaining more advantage.

None of this is in essence 'wrong' in purely capitalist terms; the object of the exercise is to make profit and economies of scale and market dominance allow you to maximise profit.

And you are right to a degree - people are lazy and fickle. However none of this changes the fact Tescos use their size and power to pay dairy farmers effectively the same price for a pint of milk as it costs the dairy farmer to produce it.

Jon

+1
I go to a supermarket as I can get everything I need there in one shop.
I don't even look at the price of milk when I put it in my trolley.

In which case they could easily raise the price of milk. Will many notice?


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