Casey Treloar set for series of Canberra meetings after dairy farewell video goes viral

After the heartbreaking farewell to her farm went viral, young SA farmer and journo Casey Treloar has been given a huge chance to explain why cripplingly low milk prices are hurting so much.

• Casey Treloar’s viral farewell to farm
• Adelaide vegan activist gloats over dairy farm heartbreak

South Australian dairy farming internet sensation Casey Treloar will take her battle against crippling low milk returns to Canberra next week.

The journalist and third-generation Fleurieu Peninsula farmer has reached more than one million viewers on social media and more via national media audiences this week after posting a video on Facebook highlighting the plight of her family’s 40-year dairying venture.

Casey Treloar. Picture: Screenshot

Ms Treloar will be in Canberra next Wednesday to lobby federal politicians about the future of the dairy industry, while father Stephen Treloar winds up the family farm at Willow Creek, near Parawa.

Ms Treloar said she had been offered meetings with Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, Labor’s agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon and Senator Derryn Hinch, and was seeking other dairy farmers nationally to add their messages to those she will take to the national capital.

“We need to take a united message to Canberra to create a positive outcome for the industry and talk with politicians about the way forward, especially with the federal election looming this year,’’ she said.

The Treloar family has been forced off the land by cost and price pressures, driven by the milk discount war which began in 2011. This year they have made an average 38 cents per litre in return for outlays of 60 cents per litre in production costs. Mr Treloar yesterday told The Advertiser 50 of the family’s remaining 200 cows had already found new homes, but he may not be able to sell all of them. Ms Treloar said one issue she had been urged to raise in Canberra was transparency around the contracts farmers had to sign with wholesale milk processors.