One of the participants in the meeting said that the bosses are considering the best and worst scenarios for the supply and prices of dairy products after a global decline in milk production. “Everyone was talking about how to restore milk supply,” said another. British dairy bosses have voiced concerns about their cost to the government, but officials from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are said to be simply in a “listening mode”. The dairy industry is likely to pass on higher costs from the crisis in Ukraine, disrupting fuel, fertilizer and feed prices by squeezing both farmers and processors. Andrew Kuyk, general manager of the Provision Trade Federation, said: “Everything is going in the wrong direction at the same time. “The direction of travel is bad. “The power of price increases is stronger than most people have known lately, because all of this is quite unprecedented.” Mr Oakes, who is also a farmer, said: “I paid around 000 7,000 for an artic [articulated lorry] fertilizer load, and this year is .000 28,000. It would have been a little less before Ukraine happened, but it made another big leap because we had already seen higher gas prices, which have an impact on fertilizer costs. “It has not been a particularly good time for dairy farms in recent years. “Cash flows were quite limited.” He added that the cost of feed has increased by 60%.
