Ian Potter: farewell to ‘a giant of the dairy industry’

Many readers will be sad to hear that Ian Potter, ‘a giant of the dairy industry for three decades’ died on 27 February 2023, due to medical complications after a short illness. As his family wrote on the IPMS website, throughout his career he had the interests of dairy farmers at heart and loved what he did and the industry that he worked in. 

The writer first heard of Ian through the pages of the Independent in 2005, which reported that according to the Milk Development Council, about 1,000 dairy farmers were quitting the business every year:

“Ian Potter, a businessman who trades EU milk quotas that authorise dairy farming, said morale in the dairy industry had sunk to dangerously low levels. He said ‘The strike is an indication of how desperate and frustrated dairy farmers are. It’s not something any of them wish to take part in but they just think all other means are failing”.

Ian Potter received the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers’ Princess Royal Award (in 2010 at Buckingham Palace, for his outstanding services to the industry and unique role as a disseminator of up-to-date information through his website and regular press articles.

In July 2013 Ian championed a cause featured on an allied website: Colne businessman David Fishwick who set up a savings and loans institution which offered 5% annual interest and lent it to local businesses at 8.9%, offering a personal guarantee to make good any losses. Profit left after paying the three staff of Burnley Savings and Loans was given to charity.

To read more about his work go to this 9 page account. It includes news of meeting with DairyCo via his PA. Gayle Hackett, Moo Man film promotion, view of the Groceries Supply Code of Practice, links to articles on this site quoting Ian, his congratulations of the Woodcock family at Yew Tree Dairy, support for David Handley and Farmers for Action, writings about soy milk and other plant-based foods, Kite Consultings report and the last item of news, about BeeWalk.

After reading Ian Potter’s downbeat dairy news posted on the Political Concern website, Julian Rose once emailed:

“Ian is an enduring stalwart of the dairy industry. I bought and sold quota through him back in the 1990’s. His prognosis is all too true, it is indeed the supermarket and the global marketing casino that continue to ensure that the price of milk is subject to the roller-coaster ride it has become tragically accustomed to. A roller-coaster which continually forces dairy farming onto its knees”.

–

A book of condolences is being opened and contributions are welcomed via condolences.ianpotter@ipmsltd.co.uk

 

 

 

 

o

When will British Fairtrade milk be available for Fairtrade coffee?

With great fanfare the Co-operative News announced that Fairtrade Fortnight (24 February to 8 March) has started, continuing the movement’s campaign for cocoa farmers to get a living wage.

Why shouldn’t the Fairtrade principle be applied to all British food producers?

A record going back to 1999 reports that MP Lindsay Hoyle (now the Speaker) initiated EDM 166: Farmgate Prices, calling on the Government to work with supermarkets to ensure that UK dairy farmers have a minimum farmgate price set for milk.

Ten years ago the Farmers Weekly reported that PM David Cameron said farmers should get a fair deal for the food they produce, adding that there have been many complaints from farmers about the aggressive behaviour of supermarkets. As a FAIR TRADE MILK Facebook entry says: Give farmers Fair prices for MILK

Tessa Munt, when MP for Wells (Somerset), decided to investigate a Fairtrade milk scheme for UK dairy farmers (link to her website article now down).

She pointed out that the Fairtrade Foundation currently works to support farmers in the developing world to ensure that they get a fair price for their products, but there is clearly a need to do the same ‘at home’ in the UK. Tessa said:

“I have spoken previously about how vitally important it is to keep dairy farming alive and to make sure our farmers get a fair price for their products.  As a nation, we should concentrate on food security and be able to feed ourselves.  I really believe a Fairtrade milk scheme would be an effective way to ensure that the farmers are protected and the consumer knows at a glance that he or she is supporting British farming when shopping for milk or milk products” 

A Moseley correspondent found a good link to a shorter article which also contains an effective video.

Hazel Paterson’s article in the Metro pointed out that if one strolls down any supermarket aisle, Fairtrade items like bananas from Columbia, coffee from Indonesia and chocolate from Ecuador on the shelves can be seen – then stroll down the chilled dairy aisle and see litres and litres of cut price milk – four pints for just £1.10 in Asda.

She reminds us that dairy farmers were protected by the Milk Marketing Board which set the price of milk paid to farmers and ensured a fair price at the gate which meant a fair price on the shelves. After the government abolished it, it was divided into several processors who could choose what price they paid the farmers.

For years many British dairy farmers have been going out of business and if the others don’t get a fair price, the well managed pastures and meadow will be replaced by the arable land required to grow cattle feed and huge farms with massive slurry lakes containing gallons and gallons of the waste that they produce.

At the end of May last year, the Times and Financial Times reported that the Co-operative Group raised £300 million from a bond issue sold only to institutional investors guaranteeing them 5% interest. Meanwhile many of their British dairy farmers were being offered a price which makes milk production ‘financially unviable’.

There has been no indication that the minister, George Eustice, who was not well-received at the NFU conference in Birmingham earlier this month, has any awareness of this short-sighted and unjust situation.

Year after year government, the co-operative movement and the Fairtrade Foundation ignore British farmers and all those who want to put fairly traded milk in their Fairtrade coffee.

 

 

 

 

.

.

Will Corbyn/Labour’s industrial strategy guarantee fair production costs/plus for perishable food – or rely on the global market?

“It is simply not right that any worker should have to sell their product for less than it costs them to produce them, and this is acutely felt by dairy farmers.”

Countryfile, reviewing Jeremy Corbyn’s “Rural Renewal” report, continued to quote: “A combination of a small number of very large milk processers operating as suppliers to retailers, supermarkets operating a ‘price war’ forcing down the cost of milk, and milk co-ops losing their power has resulted in thousands of dairy farmers finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, let alone make a profit.”

Corbyn said “we will work with all parties to ensure that customers are offered a price they can afford for their milk, but not at the expense of farmers whose very livelihoods depend on it. This will include investigating regulating supermarkets to prevent below cost selling.”

Factories don’t sell their products at a loss, but those producing perishable food are often required to do so. It’s so easy to put pressure on those producing perishable food: fresh milk, fruit and vegetables, who have to sell quickly – in effect holding them to ransom.

Seven years ago Telegraph View pointed out that some supermarkets pay less for milk than it costs to produce. Nothing has changed! Prices sometimes drop to the 1990s level but all other costs have risen steeply.

Confidence in successive governments continues to fall as the country has become increasingly dependent on imported food – which now even includes tomatoes from Morocco and eggs and poultry from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

A Fairtrade Policy Director noted that ‘The unpleasant and aggressive tough love lobby’ which has cut social and healthcare, education and public transport doesn’t spare family farmers

Corbyn on a Cumbrian farm, pledging to do “everything necessary” to stop no-deal Brexit carnage for famrers

No thoughts of love – or natural justice – appeared in the Oxford Farming Conference address of Liz Truss, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who blamed the ‘difficult world market’ for low milk prices and focussed on farming’s ‘huge export potential’, rejoicing that ‘we now grow chillies which we export to Pakistan and Mexico’.

Barbara Crowther (right), by far the best Fairtrade Foundation Director of Policy & Public Affairs (2009-2017), said “There is a very unpleasant and aggressive tough love lobby out there who simply do not understand the importance of locally sourced food and the underlying food security issues which are only going to get worse as the global population grows”. She asked “Could we make our Mark work on milk?”. This link to that (now unwelcome?) reference has been removed.

It’s a fair question and is something that has been looked at, and discussed many times – not least as part of a ‘Local and Fair’ conference a few years ago, bringing Fairtrade and Cumbrian farmers groups together to discuss the issues they hold in common, co-ordinated by Joe Human (see Barbara in video at that conference).

MP Anne McIntosh (below, who chaired the parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee, for several years, urged the Government to intervene, after it was reported that 60 dairy farmers went out of business in one month alone. EFRA wanted the Groceries Code which covers suppliers to the big supermarkets and retailers, to be extended to include dairy farmers – but soon afterwards, the estimable Ms McIntosh was deselected. Now in the Lords she is campaigning for the farming interests threatened by Brexit

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/politics/anne-mcintosh-trade-eu-vital-our-farmers-62385

The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers insists that all supermarkets could pay dairy farmers a price for milk that would meet the cost of production without increasing the price charged to the consumer: they would just need to accept a slightly lower profit on the milk they sell.

Placing the issue third after Angora goats and use of level crossings, the BBC, in a video link no longer working, gave priority to the destructive comments of the establishment economist, Sean Rickard.

Apparently unaware of economic interdependence – the knock-on effect to other industries and the rural economy – Sean Rickard tells farmers that if they can’t manage under these conditions, ‘they should give up making milk and live off the subsidy’.

In fact, as Clitheroe dairy farmer Kathleen Calvert often points out, the whole rural economy is affected as farmers lose income. Each working dairy farm returns a huge amount of money back into the wider economy, supporting many other regional businesses, and therefore helping to provide jobs for many. Each dairy farm that ceases to trade has a knock-on effect on the surrounding community and the economy, due to a loss of income to many other businesses. From press release, link no longer works. Instead see a briefer reference in Lancashire Life.

The key message “We are losing hold of a vital skills base at an alarming rate as dedicated dairy farming families are no longer financially able or prepared to work at a continual loss. We believe that many milk buyers gamble with the continuity and security of the UK milk supply by keeping much of the profit further up the market chain. Despite varying business structures and the importance of food production, most farm gate prices are now lower than production costs. This has a knock on effect on a wide range of other businesses and livelihoods of countless people involved, ultimately leading to pressure on incomes”.

Dairy farmers are compelled to pay a levy to DairyCo/AHDB, a body set up by government, which, consultant Ian Potter (above right) notes, has received – and spent – more than £1 million extra as a result of the increase in production. He asks: “But on what? Cynics say it spends the money on encouraging more production because that generates more levy money for it…and so on!” He continues: “In my opinion we now need a campaign to promote the buying of British dairy products using British milk . . . I have heard one Tesco farmer would prefer to give his levy to Tesco if he could to help it promote British milk. That makes sense to me if DairyCo won’t!”

Meanwhile food imports rise and government ministers advise hardworking farmers to place their ‘commodities’ on the global market so that unproductive internet bound speculators can ‘make a killing’ – nowadays more often crouched over their computer screens.

 

 

 

o

Alyn Smith MEP calls for fair food trade in Britain

“Food supply chains and markets created over the past few decades have provided cheap food – at a high social cost”

A summary of good thinking from Scottish MEP Alyn Smith, SNP member of the EP’s Greens European Free Alliance Group – first featured on this site in 2011..

Concentrated buying power from processors and retailers has played a large role in creating the situation where dairy farmers and pork farmers can’t get a price high enough to cover their production costs, or where hill farmers need to rely on EU subsidy in order to economically survive.

Sharp business practices from purchasers, such as listing fees or retrospective revision of contracts are well known in the farming sector.

Intense competition may produce lower prices but also can lead to cut corners: witness the public and animal health scandals around BSE, foot-and-mouth, or ecoli..

Deregulation didn’t work in the financial sector and it isn’t working in the food sector

Governments have systematically cut back on financial and technical support for regulators and inspections. In the UK, the FSA has had to reduce its number of inspectors by 800 and the budgets of some local government sampling units have been slashed by 70%..

Long supply chains

Food supply chains in Europe are extraordinarily long and complex, involving multiple food business entities and opaque corporate structural engineering, which increases the difficulty for adequate inspection and regulation, and opens the door for fraud and criminal activity. It makes it difficult to work out who is responsible for what, and who’s to blame when things go wrong – see the lurid story in the Observer. .

Pollution & waste

Alyn Smith continues that, disregarding illegal behaviour, “given the concerns of carbon emissions and climate change, it is bizarre that we import (for instance) water, when we produce bucket loads of the stuff, apples from South Africa or garlic from Argentina”.

He adds that a by-product of our system is that about 90 million tonnes of agricultural produce is wasted annually in Europe and about a third of the food for human consumption is wasted globally. This happens at many points along the food supply chain, from harvesting losses to supermarket quality controls and – after sale – through poor purchasing decisions or food management by some consumers who only consider the sticker price..

His question: what kind of a world is it when:

• those who till the soil to fill our dinner-plates can barely make enough to survive for another planting season,
• milk and alcohol can retail at a lower price in the supermarkets than water,
• disgusting slop can be served up to our children and our hospital patients on the grounds of “cost competitiveness”,
• the number of malnourished people is roughly equivalent to the number of obese people
• and when the fanatic search for lower prices amidst intense competition leads to the entry of the Mafia into our food chain? .

We need nothing less than a food revolution

Alyn Smith believes that this can be achieved through buying local and notes anecdotal evidence that sales at local butchers are up 20-25%:

“Short supply chains, farmers markets and quality labels cut out the middle men, enabling direct purchase by consumers and a guarantee for transparency and quality: it boosts the local economy as well, protects diversity in the retail sector and helps keep our farmers on the land. The Scottish Government have already invested £200,000 in farmers markets, and promoted education about healthy eating in schools.

”I’ve been pushing for mandatory country of origin labeling for many years through the EU food labelling legislation, which will encourage our consumers to buy local . . .

“ The European Parliament’s AGRI Committee have also voted for Rural Development funding for farm certification schemes, which I think is the best way for farmers to win confidence among consumers through voluntarily taking external controls and verification. .

A call for fair trade in Britain

“And we need to push harder for reforms to the EU’s competition rules, to ensure farmers can get the bargaining power they need for a fair price, and reduce the power of supermarkets to crush their smaller brethren”.

”Let’s seize the opportunity, not just to fix the immediate problems of fraud in food labelling and adequate inspections and controls, but to fix our food chain to make it fairer for producers and consumers alike”.

.

News from the United States dairy sector & Californian minimum price

Michael Hart has forwarded news from his contacts in the Family Farms Defenders in the USA. 

A year ago the Journal Sentinel reported on a hearing on antitrust issues in the dairy industry, held by the U.S. Department of Justice in order to gather testimony from dairy farmers. It heard that many are being squeezed out of business as other sectors of the food industry demand a greater share of the consumer’s dollar. 

“What we are hearing is a consistent message, which has not always been the case. Dairy producers, large and small, are hurting,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the hearing. 

He added that in the past 10 years, the number of U.S. dairy farms has fallen from 111,000 to fewer than 65,000 and that much of the loss has come from farmers who have been forced out of business, especially in the past two years, adding: “I have a growing concern about rural America and the nation’s food supply”. 

Producers getting less than a third of the retail price 

Dairy farmers currently get about 97 cents from a gallon of milk sold for $3 at the grocery store. The rest of the money goes to the store, a processor and others involved in the handling, buying and selling of the product. 

Milk price rises fail to cover rising costs of inputs 

A year later the Journal Sentinel reports that dairy economists predict many farmers who are still recovering from 2008 and 2009, two of the worst years in the dairy industry, could receive a price for their milk which would slip below a break-even point and continue at that level through the summer. 

Though – as in Britain – milk prices had increased early this year, farmers face higher operating costs, including fuel, cattle feed, fertilizer and other supplies, that have undermined profits. 

Californian legally enforceable regulation 

California, which represents over one-fourth of U.S. milk production, also has regulated minimum class prices that are determined by wholesale product price formulas, under its Stabilization and Marketing Plan for Market Milk. 

This firmly states that “the payment by a handler, either directly or indirectly, of less than the minimum producer price established under the applicable Stabilization and Marketing Plan adopted pursuant to Chapter 2, is an unlawful trade practice”. 

Note the insight into farmers’ impact on their rural communities and the economic multiplier effect in a report from the US Dairy Industry Advisory Committee, which advises the US Department of Agriculture – DEFRA please note!