Countries around the world are joining together to celebrate a global food with the 16th World Milk Day on 1 June. Closer to home, Malton-based insurance brokers McClarrons, who specialise in insurance solutions for rural businesses, are taking the opportunity to raise awareness around the plight of dairy farmers.
With a predicted drop in the income of dairy farmers by an alarming 45%, according to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, there continues to be a shadow of doubt around the profitability of dairy farming. So much so, that almost 1000 have thrown in the towel since 2014 – a figure which makes up 10% of all dairy farmers in England and Wales.
Lower demands have impacted prices of milk around the world, and while this complex problem is still yet to meet a solution, McClarrons Director Sean McClarron placed emphasis on supporting them in the meantime:
“What’s important to us and them is not only ensuring they’re not paying over the odds for their protection, but ensuring that the insurance they do have in place is going to be really effective when needed, and hopefully relieve any additional pressures. We started back in 1988 for these clients – it’s the reason we work, and the reason we as a business exist.”
Started in 2001 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), World Milk Day is more apt than ever as farmers struggle with the declining price of milk, while the production costs remain the same.
Paul Brannen MEP, Labour’s European Parliament spokesperson on agriculture and rural development, said that consumers have a definite role to play in ensuring that dairy farmers get a fair deal on their produce:
“It is clear customers have an important role to play, by demonstrating to the supermarkets that they do not want to be unwittingly involved in putting UK dairy farmers out of business as a result of buying cheap milk.
“We are calling on the British consumer to ask probing questions of their supermarket manager, as they have done in the past about fairly traded products from the developing world, to find out if a fair price has been paid to the farmer for the milk we buy.”
