Dairy Products

Whose fault is it?

/ dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

Lots has changed since 1980. Milk production in Victoria has more than doubled despite cow numbers remaining the same and 35% per cent less land to graze.

Since then, we’ve had massive advances in cow genetics, understanding how to grow grass and exactly what cows need to eat. But we farmers are no better off. Despite it all, we’re very much poorer.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on why that is and just whose fault it is. Pretty much everyone has copped it online: the government, supermarkets, milk processors, agri leaders, farmers and consumers. What strikes me, though, is just how similar our situation is to that of farmers around the globe.

Milk has been sprayed at icons in France, the Brits have hit the barricades in desperation, and outgunned riot police in Brussels. Things are miserable in the US, too.  I think the reality is that affluent societies consider high-quality food a right. And you don’t value your rights until they are threatened.

Very few urban Australians would believe their access to fresh milk is at risk and, until they do, unsustainable food pricing will be “someone else’s problem”. I wonder whether it will be me or my children who will one day staff the barricades, wield the “milk cannon” or simply quietly try something else that’s truly valued by Australians.

Will Curtis Stone come to the rescue of Aussie farmers and foodies?

/ dairymilkmaid / 8 Comments

Coles is pushing prices down, down, down to help the Aussie battler, right?

Actually, it appears the driving force behind Australia’s supermarket wars is something much more prosaic – supermarket ROI. According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

“A report released in March by the Merrill Lynch analyst David Errington warns that the big three retailers, Coles, Woolworths and Metcash, will need to boost their earnings by $1.3 billion in the next three years if they are to make an acceptable return on the billions of dollars of investments made on acquisitions and capital expenditure. This is on a total earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) pool of $4 billion for the retailers.”

“In the past year, the profit growth of the entire sector has shrunk. Errington’s report says that in the first half of this financial year, the three food retailers delivered a combined EBIT growth of $150 million, a far cry from the $400 million-a-year earnings growth required to make an acceptable return. It will be interesting to see what the full-year earnings will be when the sector reports in the next few weeks.

“If Coles, Woolworths and Metcash fail to generate suitable returns on capital in the next couple of years, investors’ patience will run out and the groups will suffer a significant de-rating.

“It goes a long way to explaining the intensifying price war among the supermarket chains as they try to snatch market share to justify their investments.”

Doesn’t sound like the hostilities will ease up any time soon, does it? In the meantime, we can expect more and more private-label products – especially dairy – to flood the shelves of Coles and Woolworths.

Research by IBIS World Australia reported in the International Business Times showed that, already, “Up to 68 per cent of butter sold in the two supermarkets is private label, while for sugar it is 67 per cent, 56 per cent for bread, 55 per cent for fresh milk and 53 per cent for eggs”.

Alarmingly, the researchers predicted that “by 2017, the share of such products would make up one-third of total supermarket sales”.

Why am I alert and alarmed? Because this is bad news for anyone who cares about good food. When price becomes the only differentiating factor, quality must suffer right along the food chain and the ones who will ultimately feel the pain will be the little people – the farmers who grow the food and the consumers who eat it.

So where does this leave the foodies of Australia? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

No need to worry, I guess. Celebrity chef Curtis Stone will save us all. His spin doctors, Thrive PR, say this:

“And don’t think that Curtis is just a face when it comes to his partners like Coles. He is an active contributor behind the scenes to their business and marketing function. Their success is his success.”

Then again, maybe he’s blissfully unaware of the damage to Australian food caused by “his success”. I intend to appeal for help by emailing him at contact@curtisstone.com and am sure he’d love to hear from you, too.

While you’re at it, don’t forget to sign Lisa Claessen’s petition to Coles CEO, Ian McLeod by visiting http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/coles-up-the-price-of-generic-brand-milk-to-a-sustainable-rate-of-return-for-all

No fresh milk for Australians? Is UHT the next big thing?

/ dairymilkmaid / 31 Comments

It’s been an amazing week. First, milk processor Lion, came right out and said the unthinkable – that a milk price below the cost of production was “fair” and that there need to be fewer dairy farmers in Queensland and New South Wales.

Then, yesterday, Sue Neales (follow her @BushReporter on Twitter) of The Australian reported that “Desperate Australian dairy farmers are looking to fly fresh milk directly into Asia to deprive Coles and Woolworths of their unassailable market power.”.

In Sue Neales’ story, Dairy Connect farmers’ group president Adrian Drury said: “We are telling the supermarkets that they mightn’t always have easy access to fresh milk and that they take us for granted at their peril in their push to force milk prices down.”.

What does that mean for you, the milk drinker?

To put it bluntly, you might find yourself drinking UHT milk rather than fresh milk sooner than I expected. Rumours are rife in dairy-land that Coles is keen to shift you from the fridge to the aisles when it comes to picking up your milk. Coles has quite a contingent of European executives these days, where the move from fresh to UHT has been spectacularly successful for the supermarkets. According to Wikipedia, 7 out of 10 Europeans regularly drink UHT rather than fresh milk.

Why UHT? For supermarkets, the benefits of stocking UHT are huge. It lasts longer, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated and, best of all, it can be sourced from far away, increasing their range of supply.

What’s wrong with that, you may ask? After all, there’s evidence that UHT is greener (given it doesn’t need to be refrigerated) and it is still good for you (read more about UHT here, if you like). Question is, do you want to be able to choose?

PS: If The Australian won’t let you read Sue’s story, Google the headline Farmers’ bid to end duopoly milk run and you should be able to read the lot.

How do I know buying branded milk will mean better prices for farmers?

/ dairymilkmaid / 28 Comments

“I am concerned about the welfare of Dairy farmers and the ‘$2 dollar’ milk available at supermarkets. I just want to know which milk benefits the farmers the most and not overseas owned companies who are not passing on the money to farmers. I have been paying the extra buying Dairy Farmers, only to find out that they are owned by a Japanese company!…We are happy to pay extra if we know a fair proportion of the money is going to farmers.”

A fellow called Peter sent me this message in the wee hours and raised a really good point – one that was echoed by CC & Ruby’s question the other day, so I’ve decided to address this thorny issue head-on.

Almost all dairy farmers send our milk to large processing companies because Australia’s stringent dairy food safety laws make it very expensive and difficult to supply consumers directly.

Our farm supplies the Murray Goulburn Cooperative, which is owned purely by the farmers who supply it. If you buy Murray Goulburn’s Devondale dairy foods, you know 100% of the profits are being returned to dairy farmers. The wonderful thing about MG is that because it’s owned by farmers for farmers and processes around 35% of Australia’s milk, it tends to set a farmgate price benchmark for the other processors.

On the other hand, it doesn’t pick up milk from right around Australia, concentrating on the biggest milk-producing state of Victoria. If you’re a dairy farmer in northern NSW, for example, you don’t have the option of supplying the Co-op and are more likely to supply a privately-owned processor. These privately-owned processors sell dairy foods under their own brand names or package homebrand milk under contract to the supermarkets.

When Coles and Woolies embarked on their milk war, it hit the processors hard pretty much straight away because brand name milk sales fell.

The Coles spin doctors said it wouldn’t affect farmers because they deal with the processors, not the farmers. This defies common sense. If a multinational supermarket controlling a huge chunk of retail sales decides to cut its prices below a sustainable level (Coles denies this too but Woolies has gone on record saying $1 per litre is not sustainable), putting its multinational food processor supplier to in turn lower its own costs, how do you expect that processor to respond? By sourcing the raw milk more cheaply of course! And guess what? It buys from small family businesses (98% of Australian dairy farms are family owned and operated) who have the least bargaining power of all.

No, I can’t guarantee that if Peter buys Dairy Farmer branded milk rather than private label, farmers will be better off. On the other hand, it is guaranteed that if Peter buys unsustainably priced milk, someone else will have to pay. That will almost certainly be a farmer and her family in the short term. In the medium term, it will be her cows and the environment and, over the longer term, it will be milk drinkers because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Would you like ethics with that?

/ dairymilkmaid / 6 Comments

A consultant once told me: “My services can be described as cheap, good and quick but you can only have two of the three at once.”

When it comes to milk, the choices are: cheap, good and ethical. Under the umbrella of “ethical” comes animal wellbeing, the environment and the welfare of farming families.

I don’t have any input on which pair wins out – you and the thousands of others who drink our milk or eat our cheese do. At the moment, with prices falling and consumers celebrating milk that’s cheaper than water, it seems “ethical” is the loser.

As someone who farms because she loves the land and her animals, this is very, very sad news. Currently, it is my family that is missing out rather than land or animal. Eventually though, we won’t be able to carry the burden and we will be the ones facing three choices:

1. Find a way to fund niche value adding for ethical products;
2. Industrialise our farming practices and see a fall in animal wellbeing and environmental outcomes; or
3. Leave farming.

Only time will tell.

With this in mind, it was interesting to read this comment in response to Lynne Strong’s point that consumers have a role to play in animal welfare standards following a story on The Conversation:

“Is it the case that, in buying a $5.00, 2L carton of milk in Australia, I can be assured that the product was sourced more ethically than the $2 Coles brand?”

Of course not but you can be sure that by purchasing unsustainably priced milk, you will be putting pressure on ethical standards right across the country.

How you are a pawn in the profit of permeate

/ dairymilkmaid / 8 Comments

I have a rule never to blog while I’m angry, so there’s been a distinct lack of activity on Milk Maid Marian over the last week. In the end, I’ve decided to simply lay out the facts:

– Permeate is a natural part of milk, not a waste product of the cheese making process. In fact, if you sit unhomogenised milk still long enough, the permeate settles out all by itself very clearly. In other words, there is no such thing as pure milk without permeate.

– Permeate is the milk’s sugar, minerals and vitamins.

– The composition of milk (fat and protein especially) straight from the cow fluctuates wildly over the course of a year but consumers want milk that is the same all year round. Consumers also want to be able to choose skim and full cream milks.

– We call ironing out the bumps and providing the specific fat and protein content of the milk “standardisation”.

– The very small producers do not have the technology to separate all the different parts of milk to make lots of different products (like powder, casein, whey, etc). Generally, all they can do is separate the cream from the milk, which is how they standardise it.

– The larger milk companies cannot limit themselves to the tiny niches of these smaller companies, so make food ingredients as well (like the stuff that goes in sports drinks, pizza crusts, etc). This means that the milk is broken into its constituents (which include permeate) with a filter then re-mixed to standardise milk. This is what the term “modified milk” on cartons means – still 100% pure milk.

– Consumer group Choice has done lots of work on permeate and their tests confirm no taste or nutritional difference between milk that has permeate remixed and that without.

– Permeate is nothing new – been part of milk processing for years and years.

– Small and specialty milk processors need to find a point of difference in order to make milk sales viable because their cost of production is much higher.

Draw your own conclusions!

Ethical milk – which brand to buy?

/ dairymilkmaid / 14 Comments

There’s a feeling “out there” in the Twitterverse that milk aint what it used to be. So, what to choose?

The first piece of good news is that there’s lots you don’t need to worry about. Growth hormones are illegal on Australian dairy farms for a start. Free range cows are also the norm (I haven’t seen a housed herd in Australia and wouldn’t even know where to find one).

Thanks to what raw-milk advocates often call Australia’s “ridiculously stringent” food safety laws, you can be confident your dairy foods are safe for even your most frail family members; the Chinese melamine disaster won’t happen here. Despite the marketing campaigns of a large multinational corporation, permeate (check my all about permeate post to find out more) is also safe and nutritious.

If want farmers to receive a fair price for milk, you can still shop at the big supermarkets with a clear conscience if you buy a brand-name milk. It’s even better if you can buy the Devondale brand of dairy products because they are made by the 100% farmer-owned co-op, Murray Goulburn. If you can access a farmstead brand of milk, that’s okay too. Don’t feel guilty if you can’t find or afford a farmstead brand though – very, very few dairy farmers can afford to set up a milk processing plant after all and we are grateful that you are supporting us by choosing not to buy the generic stuff.

What would you say to the trendy vegetarian?

/ dairymilkmaid / 23 Comments

We just had a young man staying with us who announced he’s become a vegetarian. When I asked why, he said it was because he liked what PETA says about not taking the life of another creature.

I try to be very open-minded but as soon as someone says “PETA says…”, I must admit that the fire doors of my mind slam shut. I was instantly infuriated. Just wanted him to leave but couldn’t say so. Instead, I told him he’d have to go a lot further than giving up chicken, pork and beef burgers.

As the weekend worn on, he ate copious amounts of eggs, dairy and…seafood. Quizzed a little more closely, he said his “vegetarianism” was really for health reasons. I urged him to see a dietician to make sure he has enough iron and vitamin B but he’s okay – he eats corn at least twice a week.

The experience has opened my eyes to the value of nutritional education when it comes to making food and lifestyle choices. Becoming a vegetarian or vegan is trendy. Thinking about supplements and vitamin B12 patches is not. Yet, according to experts cited in Wikipedia, “Poorly planned vegan diets may be low in vitamin B12, calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, iron, zinc, riboflavin (vitamin B2), and iodine.”

What would you say? In the meantime, grab a Coke and enjoy this hilarious clip on trendy diets from Mamamia.

What do glue, paint, tablets and clag have in common?

/ dairymilkmaid / 6 Comments

Another fascinating snippet from the Gippsland Murray Goulburn newsletter:

“Casein accounts for about 80 per cent of the total protein in skim milk post the separation process. It is mostly associated with cheese-making but is harvested from the curd to be used in many products, including glue, pharmaceutical tablets and some paints. Many of us may remember Clag in artwork made from casein.”

And the fattest is…

/ dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

Well, I think it’s time bakers started labelling different bread varieties “full fat”, “reduced fat” and “skinny” because this pumpkin five-grain bread pictured in my last post weighed in at 5.6% fat and the full cream milk is just 3.3%. The multigrain loaf in our freezer is 2.8%.

If bakers have any sense, they won’t though. I mean, who would want to try marketing a product in terms of something as hideous as fat and create the impression that it’s the food’s defining attribute? Apparently, only we dairy people do. I don’t understand why all whole milk isn’t labelled as 96% fat-free. As a remarkable source of vitamins, calcium and protein, that’s pretty impressive.

We’ve also hashed up the image of dairy with our terminology: why “permeate” for milk’s vitamins and minerals or “anhydrous milk fat” for ghee?