We ask people to buy Australian to support farmers, while farming itself depends on a world far beyond our shores. Image source unknown
For decades, the Australian dairy industry knew exactly who the enemy was. Margarine. Yellow, slippery, and forever pretending it belonged on the same plate as butter. Farmers, factories, and marketers were united. Then deregulation arrived in 2000 and, with impressive efficiency, we stopped fighting margarine and started fighting each other.
Overnight, Victorian milk could flow straight into the New South Wales market. The theory was competition would make everyone better. For those of us at the coal face, the reality was messier. Deregulation was followed by ten years of drought, which felt less like reform and more like endurance training.
Much of this story is told best by Geoff Boxsell, who lived it from inside the industry and later recounted it in an amusing speech to Probus in 2003. With impeccable timing, Geoff described how we went from battling margarine to waging war on ourselves, explaining complex industry shifts with humour, clarity, and more than a few knowing laughs from the room. It is the kind of storytelling that only works when the speaker has earned the right to tell it.
At the centre of it all was DAIRY FARMERS COOPERATIVE It was the second largest dairy co-operative in Australia, farmer owned and powerful. That is very different from dairy farmers, the people milking cows every day. When DAIRY FARMERS was sold in the late 2000s to National Foods, the co-operative disappeared. What remained were brands, and even those did not stay together for long.
National Foods, a Japanese owned company, sold off the Dairy Farmers brands, including white milk, to other processors. The result was a dairy shell game. Brands moved, ownership blurred, and consumers were left squinting at cartons trying to work out who was behind the milk. Canadian owned players entered the market as well, just to keep things interesting. See note at the bottom that does its best to explain the confusion.
Then consumers pushed back. NSW shoppers wanted milk produced in New South Wales. That preference mattered. Victorian dairy companies were forced to move into NSW, to process milk here and source milk here, so they could truthfully say their milk came from NSW.
And just like that, the marketplace opened up again. In our region, several companies began offering farmers different supply options. Choice returned. Competition followed. Milk companies now had to compete on price, contracts, incentives, and relationships, not just brand recognition. After years of consolidation, the power pendulum swung back towards farmers.
And here is the quiet punchline. Mrs Jones, the fictional character from the old margarine ads, once assured Australians they deserved choice. She was not kidding.
From a farmer’s perspective, there was one unexpected bonus. Productivity lifted dramatically. Cows today produce three to eight times the milk they did fifty years ago. In 1975, Jamberoo had 74 dairy farms. Today, there are nine. Those nine farms produce the same amount of milk, about 20 million litres a year, as the entire valley did in 1975.
BUT this story does not end with choice returning to the farm gate.
What followed was another battle entirely. Once farmers regained options and consumers exercised their voice, both groups found themselves up against a far more powerful force, the supermarkets. In this series of posts I wrote in 2013, I looked at how dairy farmers and consumers went to war with the major retailers, particularly Coles, how the balance of power in the supply chain tipped again, and what happened when suppliers finally began to speak out. It is a story of intimidation, courage, and the slow unravelling of a system that had gone too far, and it starts with a Background Briefing investigation that still sends shudders down my spine.
So where does that leave us now? With a simple message that cuts through the noise.
Buy milk. Buy dairy products. By doing so, you support the Australian dairy industry.
Some processed dairy products, excluding fresh white milk, come from New Zealand, but the overwhelming majority of dairy products sold here are produced on Australian dairy farms.
The war with margarine fizzled out, the industry survived a family feud, and Australian dairy is still here, filling fridges and keeping regional communities alive.
A very short timeline that explains the confusion 🤔- I was at the coal face and I am very confused
-
2007
National Foods is acquired by Kirin, a Japanese beverage and food company. -
2008
National Foods (owned by Kirin) buys DAIRY FARMERS, then the second largest dairy co-operative in Australia.
This ends DAIRY FARMERS as a farmer-owned co-operative. -
2008–2009 ACCC conditions
To allow the purchase, the ACCC required National Foods to sell off other dairy brands and assets so it would not hold too much market power.
Brands such as Ski yoghurt and other assets were divested and ended up with different companies. -
2009
Kirin merges National Foods with its Australian alcohol and dairy business Lion Nathan, creating Lion Nathan National Foods, later known as Lion Dairy & Drinks.
Some Dairy Farmers brands still sit inside Lion. -
2010s
Dairy Farmers branding is split, licensed, sold, or used across different regions and products.
Brand ownership, milk sourcing, and processing locations no longer neatly align. -
2020
Bega Cheese acquires Lion Dairy & Drinks, bringing Dairy Farmers brands owned by Lion back under Australian listed ownership, though no longer as a co-operative and with a complex shareholder base.
Bottom line:
Between Kirin, National Foods, Lion, ACCC-mandated divestments, brand sell-offs, and later acquisition by Bega, the ownership trail became almost impossible for consumers to follow. That confusion is not accidental, it is the legacy of consolidation, competition law, and global capital moving through what used to be farmer-owned institutions.
BTW If anyone with more expertise than me knows something that should be tweaked in this story feel free to leave a comment.
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