November 2015

219-spilt-milk

More spilt milk!!


So, the most asked question at Farmers Market, at the moment, is why is the milk market in such a mess or who split the milk? There is no short answer to this, but in a nutshell, the Chinese, are not buying the amount of dairy product from New Zealand that they used to. Russia have an embargo on EU food including Dairy, so the EU now has a surplus. The UK is producing a lot of milk at the moment, mainly due to a good summer. Milk quotas have now gone, and Eire have moved up a gear, if not two, so they, as part of the EU, have a surplus, and then of course we have the Supermarkets, who continue to completely undermine the market here, in the UK, by selling milk at ridiculous  prices which makes it incredibly difficult for the rest of us to make headway. Farms supplying Tesco will be excited to hear that Tesco have reviewed their milk purchasing, and those that do exactly what they are told and tow the line, will get a nice little pat on the head. Those that don’t fill in their Promar forms and divulge the entire of their farm business details, to those lovely Tesco people will get the chop. Look out you dairy men, you will love every moment! So where do you buy your milk. Well, Waitrose pay a sensible price as do M&S, but why not try fresh unpasteurised milk from a vending machine, at
Peak House Farm, click here! Or at Winchester Farmers Market. We are asked for unpasteurised milk, but don’t have a licence to sell it. Why not try Maple Field, pasteurised but not homogenised milk, sold in the Salisbury area. Morrisons are doing a Farmers Milk, but having seen how they treat their parsnip growers, we will give that a miss thank you.