LAST Thursday, hundreds of farmers and supporters of Farmers for Action were out on the picket lines in support of the campaign to get a better price for milk.

Farmers for Action says that the protests last Thursday night stopped all supplies both in and out of nine separate supermarket distribution centres. The group claims this resulted in chaos in supermarkets across the whole of the country the following morning, as the stores only carry one day's supply of commodities at any time.

Farmers for Action had massive support, with hundreds of demonstrators out at each site.

The actions are carefully planned and co-ordinated. Until demonstrators leave a central collecting point, only one or two people know which company is being targeted that night. The picketing is always peaceful and until last week had ended at midnight.

The demonstrations are to seek a high price for milk.

In 1994, when the Milk Marketing Board was destroyed along with all the other marketing boards to allow free trade in farm products in the UK, milk in this country was being sold by farmers at more than 21p per litre.

This was the pool price regardless of where it was produced and was designed to balance supply and demand in good years and bad, and also guarantee a constant supply of wholesome fresh milk to every household in the country. A national transport system moved this milk from distant milk producers to their customers in the large cities.

When the marketing board was dismantled, dairy companies set up their own groups of suppliers, tied to them with watertight contracts, which quickly began to dominate the milk market, and the price of milk from the farms dropped from a peak of 25p per litre to 14p earlier this year.

The Dairy Farmers Co-operative Milk Marque, which had been set up by farmers in an effort to provide a group to negotiate with the dairy companies, was castrated by Government rules and threats from the monopolies commission and had to be split into three smaller co-ops to reduce their marketing power whilst the dairy companies and the supermarket chains took total control of the milk market.

Today, milk left our farm at just over 19p per litre, but wages and all the other costs associated with producing milk are almost double those of ten years ago.

Dairy products in the shops have risen with the claim that more would be paid to dairy farmers.

But only minuscule parts of these price rises are being passed on to dairy farmers and consumers are being misled.

Our milk has just risen half of one penny per litre.

With this background of low prices to dairy farmers, coupled with threats of sanctions against the NFU if it was seen to be attempting to intercede on behalf of its farming members, Farmers for Action, led by David Handley, began a campaign to get a fairer deal for dairy farmers. This began in a small way with protests targeted against individual dairies.

From these small beginnings, a massive nationwide organisation has grown up and unless the price of milk being paid to dairy farmers improves very quickly, the group's aim is to spread its actions, with longer periods of picketing.

Updated: 11:21 Wednesday, November 26, 2003