Kendall raises hackles of Scots farmers

Scottish milk producers were less than happy yesterday after Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union in England and Wales, rejected their challenge to become more actively involved in the current campaign on milk price.

After speaking at a dairy conference in Glasgow, Kendall was questioned by Lanarkshire producer Iain Smith, who chairs the Wiseman Milk Partnership. Smith stated the campaign needed an organisation with the political power of the NFU to sort out the inequalities in the milk supply chain.

But Kendall declined the opportunity to take up any frontline action, saying the role of the English Union was to provide the tools for those who were taking more direct action.

Smith's challenge was then taken up by Doris Robertson, who in addition to being involved in the family dairy farm on the south side of Glasgow is the secretary of Dairy Farmers of Scotland. She pointed out the more active role in taken by NFU Scotland with some of the Scottish Union hierarchy attending last month's demonstration.

She added that while Kendall had indicated his support for direct supply contracts as the answer for producers in getting better prices for their milk, the reality was that 80 to 85 per cent of dairy farmers were outwith these particular agreements. "We need you to pull out all the stops on this" she stated but when he declined to do so, she described herself as being "very, very disappointed" with his reaction.

Earlier Kendall had expressed his concern that consumers might latch on to the current publicity surrounding increases in food prices with the battle by dairy farmers to get more cash. Having spent years getting consumers to support farmers, he feared there might be a backlash to any demonstrations based on increasing prices.

Both Kendall and Robertson stressed the importance of activity in Europe with the euro politicians setting up the so called High Level Group whose remit is to prevent fluctuations and unsustainable low prices affecting the European milk market.

Already this group has highlighted the importance of long-term contracts between producers and processors. It has also proposed national marketing organisations aimed at removing the peaks and troughs in milk price as these can be very damaging to producers dealing with a product with little or no storage capacity.

The problem for UK producers with this latter proposal is the attitude of Defra who would be required to support it.Robertson said it was crucial to ensure these proposed marketing organisations had control over as large a percentage of the total output as possible.

For those 200 or so producers at the conference, the dispute currently dominating UK milk politics was aggravated by Mark Voorbergen from the Dutch Rabobank, who confirmed that world milk and dairy product prices would remain strong for the next five years.

Even although Chinese milk production is increasingly massively, he predicted that country would continue to be a major importer of milk products.

In meeting this predicted strong demand for milk though out the world, he was also sure that limitations such as water shortages, bank controls and high grain prices would adversely affect the supply side.