The Farmer’s Angel Alison Fairleigh has gone into to bat for Australian dairy farmers. You can read the full version (snapshot below) of her fabulous blog post here
Someone described consumers to me the other day as “notoriously dense”. Just like sheep, we have a herding mentality and the large supermarkets (Coles & Woolworths), with their multi-million dollar marketing budgets, play on this mentality perfectly for guaranteed market share, mega profits and shareholder satisfaction.
Let’s take a look at $1 per litre milk as an example of how well the duopoly pull the wool over consumer eyes. People purchase the so-called “discounted” milk because it’s cheap, because food budgets are tight and because they feel they are making a small saving on an item that is a staple for most families. But are they really saving? As this infographic from Dairy Defenders portrays, they are paying for it on other items.
Our dairy farmers are continuing to maintain the rage too with Milk Marian Marian appealing to Curtis Stone’s sense of community in this thought provoking blog. Marian is appealing to Australians to email Curtis as she thinks he maybe he’s” blissfully unaware of the damage” to Australian farmers and the threat to Australian food caused by his highly successful marketing campaigns on behalf of Coles. Marian says “I intend to appeal for help by emailing him at contact@curtisstone.com and am sure he’d love to hear from you, too”
I will be emailing Curtis too and inviting him to visit Paradise.
Perhaps he might even like to stay the night so he can get up and help milk the cows and meet all our wonderful young staff whose jobs and futures are under threat by the fallout from the supermarket milk price wars.
He can meet some of our cows that we have nurtured from their first breath.
He can meet Peena the lamb. I am sure he will find her just as fascinating as the cows do
He can meet Nick and Emma who are looking forward to bringing up the 8th generation of dairy farmers at Clover Hill
It will be interesting to see the response to my invitation. I am confident Curtis would love to come but will Coles let him?. My impression is they are just not interested in seeing the real story. I have probably got more chance of getting Bill Gates to visit my farm than Coles allowing Curtis Stone to come.Coles management just don’t get it and sadly I don’t think they want to get it. Management have short term targets and short term vision and all they care about is getting their bonuses and appeasing shareholders.
As farmers we get up every day to do our very best to live up to the promise of best outcomes for people. animals and the planet. As a result of the milk price wars there are now hundreds of farmers receiving prices like 12c/litre for their milk. It is ridiculous that Coles just don’t understand this is not enough money to fed cows, feed your family, reduce your footprint and deliver best environmental outcomes and spend money in your community or employ people, let alone all the other things on farmer wish lists. Something has to give and just how do you chose and live with the decisions you make.
Maybe the only answer is to become as detached from reality as Coles appears to be and if that is the only option one thing I know at Clover Hill we wont choose to ever stoop that low
Come and visit paradise Curtis and see for yourself. We will show you our best country hospitality as we are very #proud2dairy
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