Farmers stage mass protest over milk

At least 300 protesters responded to an invitation by the activist group, Farmers For Action, to gather at the Asda stands at noon yesterday.

Asda’s milk supplier, Arla, was one of a number of dairies which last week announced a second serious cut in milk prices in four months.

The FFA organiser for Yorkshire, Stephen Frankland, carried a banner saying: “Tesco, Sainsbury, M&S and Waitrose, support dairy farmers. The rest are killing us.”

Asda and Arla had got wind of the demo and had senior staff waiting, but they were taken by surprise by the scale of the protest.

Jonathan Ovens, a Wiltshire dairy farmer who chairs the Arla suppliers’ group, suggested a dozen spokespersons followed him into their main pavilion for talks. But the whole crowd shouldered its way in, ignoring protests by the company officials about health and safety risks.

Mr Ovens, facing down angry shouts of “Judas” and calls for him to resign, agreed that the farmers were now getting almost 5p a litre less than the cost of production. Chris Brown, head of sustainable sourcing for Asda, said both he and Mr Ovens were talking about the problems. But he stressed he was not going to come to a conclusion on the spot.

Ash Amirahmadi, chief UK milk buyer for Arla, eventually talked the meeting to a conclusion. He said he was not happy and the Danish and Swedish farmers who own Arla were not happy, but the only way forward was to invest to make UK farmers less vulnerable to the international market in basic milk products.