Dairy code on hold
FRUSTRATED dairy farmers will have to wait until after the federal election for the mandatory Dairy Code of Conduct to be released.
The policy is waiting for approval, but the federal government has gone into caretaker mode in the lead up to the May 18 election.
“It is frustrating because dairy farming is a 24/7 industry and the policy has been put on hold for farmers struggling with issues like drought,” president of United Dairyfarmers of Victoria Paul Mumford said.
The mandatory code will help to manage the business and contractual relationship between farmers and processors. It will establish standard business practices for dealings between processors and farmers, and protect farm businesses against abhorrent conduct by processors.
Federal Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources David Littleproud said the policy was set to ban retrospective price cuts, mid season price cuts, exclusive contracts, two tier pricing and processors withholding loyalty payments.
However, Mr Mumford said the code will not address long term milk prices, as well as conduct in the retail sector and supply chains.
“These are things we wanted to see, but it has been made clear it won’t happen,” Mr Mumford said.
Leongatha South farmer Gordon Vagg said farming has been going backward and it would be beneficial for the code to address price security.
“A lot of people are giving it away. There’s not enough milk in the country,” he said.
Mr Vagg said regardless of these negatives, he supported the code.
In the meantime, dairy farmers are looking toward the UDV conference, which will be held this Friday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The conference will address the dairy plan and will include a guest speaker from the Victoria Police to discuss trespassing and activists.
Victorian Minister for Agriculture Jaclyn Symes will open the session.
Around 180 people are anticipated to attend.
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Posted by Tayla Kershaw on May 7 2019. Filed under Rural News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
