Farming: Wiseman restates price commitment

Robert Wiseman Dairies has cleared up what it described as a misunderstanding on its recent milk price announcement. Initially it was thought the company had decided to rescind its planned price cut “for the month of August” but this was changed yesterday to “for the foreseeable future”.

It said: “We are happy to clarify that we are holding the price from August, not for August.”

However, no comment was made on a letter the company and all other processors have received from Farmers For Action (FFA) calling for a reinstatement of price cuts put through in June, nor for all future agreements to be based on a cost-plus basis.

A similar letter from FFA, which has been heavily involved in the various demonstrations and protest meetings over the past weeks, has also gone to all the major retailers.

David Handley of FFA said that some retailers had already agreed to this cost-plus clause, but pointedly had avoided mentioning whether this commitment related to all their milk purchases or only a percentage.

Handley said the letter – which asks for a response by  14 August, giving the commitment to be made by the beginning of October – was necessary because dairy farmers were no longer prepared to tolerate receiving less than the cost of production for their milk.

He said copies of the letters had gone to UK farm minister Jim Paice and his counterparts in Scotland and Wales, Richard Lochhead and Alan Davis.

Producers in the UK have believed that one of their strengths in the current price tussle has been the inability to import fresh milk from the Continent, but there were reports yesterday that one South of England retailer was buying milk in Belgium at 23p per litre and transporting it to this country.