Only purse power can force rethink on retail milk prices

DAIRYCO asked recently: “Will the growth of discounters keep the lid on retail milk prices?”

If as discounters do show strong growth over the next five years as recent Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) forecasts predict, then this may hopefully finally weaken the hold that the largest retailers have enjoyed over the dairy supply chain that has put the security of our safe and inexpensive British milk supply at risk.

Asda’s CEO Andy Clarke is quite entitled to disclose that his company aims to further reduce the price gap with the discounters. After all, large stores need to offer something that draws customers into their stores like smaller businesses have to do. He does not mention though how Asda reduces customers’ end basket prices by reducing 
the milk income of British producers, rather than reducing their own significant profit margins.

If the large retailers find themselves competing with discounters as well as with potentially strong food export markets, while continually forcing British producers 
out of business, there will 
very soon be none of the cheap British milk left for them to supplement the ever dwindling supplies of safe British food that helps draw customers into their stores.

Ironically Asda was formed by a group of Yorkshire farmers in 1965. Given the size and financial means of today’s Asda it is clear that supermarkets do not want consumers to pay a realistic price for milk even if consumers want to do so, as this is not in the retailers’ own best interest.

Despite their claims of support for dairy farmers, maximum short-term gains are far more of a concern to large profit-driven retailers than the long-term future of British dairy farmers or the long-term interests of consumers.

Purse power and a refusal to buy cheap milk from any source may now be the only answer, otherwise in the end the consumer will be the loser, not retailers who will seek their profits elsewhere.This makes it very difficult for farmers to invest for the future where they have no certainty of the level of their income and this is hardly an incentive for the young to carry on in their family businesses.

From: Tim Mickleburgh, Boulevard Avenue, Grimsby.

I DON’T think people have fully understood why the student didn’t want to work at 
Poundland (Yorkshire Post, October 31).

For it wasn’t that she objected to having to undergo work experience while on Job Seekers’ Allowance, but that Poundland were and are a commercially successful firm.

In other words if they hadn’t taken her on, they’d have had to have employed a proper worker being paid the minimum wage.

So in fact her presence at a shop was depriving someone of real employment, which is not what work placements are all about.

That’s why I’ve always ensured any scheme I’ve done has seen me working for charities and other non-business organisations.

From: Bob Watson, Springfield Road, Baildon.

ED Balls was quoted as saying (Yorkshire Post, October 30) that “my job as the Shadow Chancellor and potential Chancellor at the next election is to be hard-headed about standing up for value for money for taxpayers”.

What a joke! This man was a huge part of the last spendthrift Labour administration that helped to leave our country in such a mess. There is no way that he could be trusted to be a future Chancellor. Quite frankly, I really can’t think of anything worse than this unpleasant and abrasive individual having any role in a future government.