Closing post
Time to wrap up - here are today’s main stories:
Goodnight. GW
Back on the cost of living crisis, UK farmers are warning that milk production is starting to fall as sharp rises in cost of fuel, feed, and fertiliser outstrip increases in farm-gate prices.
My colleague Zoe Wood reports:
“Something has to give and if the milk price doesn’t give, then the producers will,” says Oxfordshire dairy farmer David Christensen in a stark assessment of the peril his industry is facing as soaring costs push farm finances into the red.
Christensen, whose family business manages a herd of about 1,000 cows, says costs were already going up as a result of the upheaval caused by the pandemic and Brexit, but the war in Ukraine has “turbocharged inflation to levels the like of which I’ve never seen in 30 years of farming”.
He is a member of Arla, Britain’s largest dairy co-operative, which has sounded the alarm as the financial squeeze forces UK milk production to fall – a trend that could threaten future milk supplies.
Ash Amirahmadi, the managing director of Arla Foods UK, said producing fresh milk had for some time been delivering “little to no profitability for farmers” but the situation was now acute as the Ukraine crisis stoked farm cost inflation.
