Chips
Member
- Location
- Shropshire
My capital figures include the value of Milklink and come from the paper released at BoR that has determined the BoR representation for the coming election cycle.
I understand your annoyance and predicted it would be a potential issue when it was explained last week, but please look at the overall picture. Everyone can have reasons why they feel another member got a slightly better deal, because they came in with Milklink, having only just joined or have expanded or paid a bit different interest rate on there loan and so on. Certainly some ex Milk Link members think AFMP members got in cheaply compared to the 10 years (some quite painful years) it took to build Milklink.
Up until last week it was virtually free to join in Denmark & Sweden. It was easy for farmers to resign and return as they pleased which we in the UK had complained about. Now there is at least some cost and it is equal to all. Most of the potential new members are coming in because they have been getting a lower milk price than we have, so they have their own problems. Our business could do with their milk so we have enough to meet our contracts and sales opportunities in the next trough period, that will benefit all of us.
I should also point out that under the new terms the new members do not end up with as much in individual capital, so when they leave they get less back, but I understand that you may not think that makes any difference as you would prefer the money to use.
It's a bit like when you buy a tractor , you never pay exactly the same as the next customer , prices rise and fall , unfair but that's life .
What I don't understand is why we need to keep recruiting , we are constantly told it was simple supply and demand that drove our price to the depths it went and the solution for the future is to get a higher percentage of our milk into premium brands , surely the quickest and cheapest way to do this for our current members interests would be to pull our current supply up the price ladder as we lose some milk , taking milk away from those highly volitle commodity markets , yes it may mean we miss out on the highest of highs , but I think most of us would prefer a pretty steady price . I know we have to have a certain amount for balancing but I believ currently only 44% of our milk is in our own brands , surely there is plenty of balancing capacity already . we were told our brands never dropped below a farmgate price of roughly 25p during the trough , had Arla never dropped below that I think most would of accepted not getting the highs of the autumn just gone and there would be a lot less discontent . Either that or we need to have two prices in arla one for your core and one for extra litres and pay on them accordingly that way each farmer can choose how he wishes to proceed through a downturn and not have to subsidize his neighbor with deeper pockets who is effectively trying to put his neighbour out of business . What's the point in subsidizing extra production of milk in a downturn to go into contracts only returning single figures ?