Did you hear the Today programme this morning? There was an excellent item on the latest cuts in dairy prices (if you missed it, it should be available for the next 7 days on iPlayer here).
The facts are stark - 40% of small UK dairy farmers have gone out of business in just 10 years. The latest cuts will, sadly, no doubt mean that others will follow. Getting paid less than the cost of production is simply untenable. That's a personal tragedy for the farmers involved, puts further strain on the rural economy, and what happens to the land? In some cases it will get sold off for development - which is bad news for the wildlife that relies on farmland too.
The good news is that the crisis in the UK dairy industry is being covered on mainstream news programmes. So it gets the message out to a wider audience. Probably just as many people were pouring their nice cold ice cold milk onto their breakfast cereal.
And even better news? The article told listeners what they can do about it. We heard that Sainsbury's, M&S, Waitrose and Tesco all pay their dairy farmers a price that reflects the cost of milk production. Of course these four make a big part of the market, but we were told there are still three major suppliers that don't - Asda, Morrison's and Co-Op.
So if you want to help wildlife, buy your milk from somewhere that gives dairy farmers a proper living. It's the right moo-ve to make.
Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
I'm not familiar with that example Sooty, but it sounds a familiar theme from many walks of life. Sometimes we all shoot ourselves in the foot, and in retrospect, would make a different decision given the chance. We just have to keep working towards a more positive future for everyone!
What a pity when lots of farmers got together and started a big new modern dairy at Melksham in Wilts lots of other farmers would not send the milk there preferring to take the short term option of a extra halfpenny a litre from the established dairies who knew that paying a bit extra for a while would make the new dairy unprofitable and get taken over by one of them.
How short sighted that was when with backing they would have been in a very strong position to demand more for their milk.In this case self inflicted pain.It was a once in a lifetime chance missed as the dairy had bought extra land to double output if successful.
Update at 3.55pm Friday 6th - Just seen Peter Kendall interviewed on BBC News about this issue. TV coverage too - great!