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.
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Food concerns 
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