Heartbroken dairy farmers rapidly selling up amid cost blowouts

Heartbroken Victorian dairy farmers are shutting down, with one in 10 gone in less than a year. Now there are concerns the exodus is putting Australia’s food security is at risk.

One in 10 Victorian dairy farms has shut down in less than a year as soaring prices for water, grain and hay send farmers out of business.

One dairy farmer who closed in February said the situation was so dire he was forced to sell almost half his dairy cows for slaughter.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Ballendella farmer Marshal Jacobs said.

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In an average year, his award-winning dairy cows would have been worth $1500 each but in a buyer’s market, the offers have been as low as $1000.

Mr Jacobs said rocketing water, grain and hay prices were hitting farmers hard.

Ballendella dairy farmer Marshal Jacobs has had to sell all his milking cows. Picture: Mark Stewart

His last milk payment covered just two of 10 bills.

He sold his entire milking herd — 40 went on to milking and 27 went to slaughter — and is looking for a home for his remaining young cows.

“At least most of them are going ahead, they’re going to see grass,” he said.

Figures from Dairy Food Safety Victoria show 375 dairy farms closed between July 1 last year and February 20 — 9.3 per cent of farms.

At the same time, there had been just 12 farm licence applications approved.

Ballendella dairy farmer Marshal Jacobs has had to sell all his milking cows. Picture: Mark Stewart

But the Herald Sun has been told of dozens more farms closing since then, ­including 11 in two weeks at Cohuna.

Mr Jacobs expected figures of dairy farm closures in his area to be more like four in 10 farms, with his business not counted in the latest statistics.

There were 5462 dairy farms in Victoria in the 2009 financial year.

The latest figures show there are 3520 — a drop of more than a third in a time when population increased by 1 million people.

Lobby group Farmer Power’s chief executive Garry Kerr said “our food security is at risk”.

“It’s a disaster, an absolute disaster and the Australian public are the ones in the end who are going to pay for it,” he said.

Mr Jacobs was worried about a future in which Australia would have to import milk when “we have the safest milk in the world”.

“It won’t be until supermarket shelves are empty, but it will be too late then,” he said. “I can’t get my 80 cows back.”

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