Former Victorian premier John Brumby launches the draft Australian Dairy Plan
A new way to ease tensions between farmers and processors is central to former Victorian premier John Brumby’s dairy blueprint released today.
A MILK price monitor needs to be established to ease tensions between farmers and processors, a dairy blueprint has outlined.
Former Victorian premier John Brumby released the draft Australian Dairy Plan on a Gippsland farm today, in a bid to produce one billion litres more milk into the coming decade.
The plan calls for the establishment of a “milk price monitor” which would act as a single source of information for farmers and other industry figures, doing away with the opaque process of pricing that has frustrated many in the sector.
“(The plan proponents) commit to building on recent work to restore trust and transparency, with a stronger focus on price disclosure and supporting measures to help manage price volatility,” the report states.
Mr Brumby touched on the annual $100 million Future Drought Fund but noted regions such as the Western District had favourable weather conditions yet were struggling with systemic structural issues within the industry.
“On the basis of modest growth projections, the Dairy Plan will support around 1 billion litres of additional national milk production annually by 2025, worth over $600 million per annum to dairy farmers,” the report states.
Today’s draft release allows farmers a period to make comment, with the report authors releasing the final version in March.
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Longwarry farmer John Versteden, who hosted today’s launch at his property, said the report highlighted the need for unity within the dairy sector.
“The underlying factors of dairy are positive — Australians on average consume more dairy than most other countries around the world,” he said.
“What we need to work on is getting all parts of the industry working together, we’ve needed improvement in that area for some time.”
Australian Dairy Products Federation president Grant Crothers said the decline of the national milk pool had been an increasing concern for dairy processors.
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