News that dairy farmers are unhappy with their lot is hardly a revelation after the turbulence of the past two years. But after a relatively quiet past few months, when farmgate prices were rising steadily, there could be fresh stirrings of mutiny in the sector.
A group calling itself Müller Non-Aligned has been placing ads in the farming press and online in a bid to mobilise the estimated several hundred farmers supplying the dairy giant with its milk who are not part of a supermarket supply group. And they’re not happy.
At the heart of the dispute is a power struggle between Müller – which is looking to harmonise its milk supply base after the purchase of Dairy Crest’s liquid milk division – and the increasingly emboldened non-aligned group, which says Müller is ignoring calls for better representation of dairy farmers not on supermarket supply contracts, and is pursuing a “divide and rule” strategy against them.
Relations are decidedly frosty between the two sides, according to one farming sector source, who spoke of “nursery school rows”, although Müller declined to go into much detail on the dispute when I approached them.
The dairy giant has a “stranglehold on the sector, and a lack of vision” according to a spokesman for Müller Non-Aligned, who says there is a “vast disconnect between farmers and their processor”, particularly on price where supermarket-aligned farmers earn significantly more for their milk.
And, more ominously, the group is “growing in number every day” and now represents a “significant volume of milk way beyond what Müller could replace at short notice on the spot market”, he warns.
Müller, for its part, says it wants to engage with this disparate and so-far undisclosed group, with agriculture director Lyndsay Chapman stating earlier this month she was “sorry that this group of farmers hasn’t contacted me directly up to now”.
But her comments, and a request for the group to attend its series of farmer meetings this month “to constructively provide their input” on Müller’s proposals for a reformed milk supply group, look to have fallen on deaf ears.
The non-aligned group’s main gripe centres around its claim Müller is “missing an opportunity” by scrapping its Direct Milk Dairy Producer Organisation (DPO) as part of proposals for a reformed milk supply group.
The DPO (enthusiastically supported by Defra when launched two years ago) evolved out of the portion of the Dairy Crest Direct DPO that migrated to Müller at the turn of the year. It allows groups of farmers to collectively represent their members on milk price and contractual terms with buyers – effectively giving it some of the powers of collective bargaining that co-operatives have.
But many Müller farmers (who were members of the processor’s Müller Milk Group) weren’t even aware of the existence of the DPO, says the Müller Non-Aligned spokesman.
“Here was a potential vehicle for change, which the farmers were unaware of. It offered so much but didn’t fulfil its potential. It feels like the Müller Milk Group cuckoo threw the DPO out of the nest,” he claims.
And with relations at a such a low ebb, we could be hearing much more about this dispute over the coming weeks.
“The new contract they have presented at these meetings only further demonstrates Müller’s absolute determination to downshift even greater risk to the exposed non-aligned producers by various methods and our producers have every intention of resisting.”
Strong words indeed.
No comments yet