The Milk " War "
THE most pacific of us may be glad to hear of a threatened milk " war " without sacrificing any principles. For the talk of " war " means that the dairy farmers have, at long last, begun to realize the necessity and value of co-operative action, and to stand firm as a body in defence of their common interests. In the old days, when the retailing of milk was performed by many small local firms vigorously competing with one another, the isolated dairy farmer could hold his own tolerably well among the various would-be purchasers of his whole output. But as soon as the retail trade began to be " rationalized," mainly through the enterprise of one large combination working on a national scale, the dairy farmer's position was changed for the worse. Instead of bargaining, he had to accept the price offered him or lose his easiest market. Traditionally reluctant to trust his neighbours, the dairy farmer was nevertheless compelled, though very gradually, to recognize that his only defence against the combine lay in concerted action. The National Farmers' Union took up his cause, at first with but indifferent success, owing to half-heartedness in the ranks. By degrees, however, the dairy farmers have strengthened their organization and gained confi- dence. This year they feel strong enough to challenge the combine, and to declare that, if they are not paid the average prices ruling two years ago for their milk, they will make other arrangements. If they stand firm on their declared policy, they will have opened a new and more hopeful era in the history of British farming.
The dispute about milk prices for the ensuing year is necessarily somewhat technical, and the public, who as consumers are vitally concerned, may not feel able to decide whether the farmers are entitled to the extra halfpenny—or, to be exact, seven-twelfths of a penny— which they demand and which the combined retailers so far refuse. Milk in the towns, and especially iii London, is not really cheap. At sixpence a quart in the summer and sevenpence in the winter it is so far a luxury that the average daily consumption of milk per head is very low indeed. The Swedes, for instance, with their daily average of a pint and a half, drink three times as much milk as we do and are a great deal the better for it. Thus no one can contemplate without grave anxiety the prospect that milk might become dearer, by however small an amount. That would inevitably mean greater infant mortality and a decline in young children's power of resisting epidemic disease. • But when the retailers' representatives glibly assume that any increase in the dairy farmers' wholesale price, however trivial, must be passed on to the consumer—the halfpenny a gallon wholesale becoming a halfpenny a quart on the retail price, or possibly more—the consuming public may well begin to ask some plain questions. It is, unfortunately, notorious that dairy farmers have done badly for the last two years. The mere fact that the number of cows kept has fallen by some 60,000 is significant of a decline in the industry. If it were flourishing, as it ought to be, the herds would have shown a steady growth year by year, for the demand for milk and milk products in our towns is far greater than the home supply. On the other hand, while dairy farming has languished, the business of milk retailing has prospered amazingly. We may acknowledge with gratitude the services rendered to the milk supply by the large combinations, and yet note that their profits have been very handsome indeed. Thus when the consumer is invited to judge between the actual producer and the distributor of milk, he is bound to be prejudiced in favour of the ill-rewarded dairy farmer, as against the milkman who is doing uncommonly well. He is virtually forced to the conclusion that if the farmer got a halfpenny more and the milkman received a half- penny less per gallon, justice would be done between them.
But, though this would appear to be the prevailing opinion, the farmers must fight their own battle, not so much by taking any definite measures as by standing together and insisting as a united body on the trivial increase of price which they ask. They cannot hope to improvise a new and rival system for distributing clean milk through every London street such as the retail concerns have gradually perfected through- many years. Now that milk is commonly pasteurised and delivered in bottles, the retailer is not so easily ousted as he might have been in the past. On the other hand, the retailers have to remember that the farmers can utilize- much of the milk of their cows in other ways than by sending it to the towns. They can feed their calves with the milk, or they can send the milk to- creameries, in the districts where farmers' co-operative societies have been able to establish these most- useful institutions. Moreover, many farmers may turn their attention to producing meat rather than milk, as some of them have done already. The position is fraught with danger for both parties, and a friendly compromise ought to be arranged without delay, in the national interest. But it remains true none the less that, provided the farmers hold fast, the ultimate settlement will be a compromise and not a surrender, and that the value of co-operation will have been throughly demonstrated.
The -so-called milk " war " is indeed a test case. If the British dairy farmers cannot work together to obtain a reasonable price for milk, in the production of which they have a natural monopoly, they will stand little chance of co-operating successfully to raise the unprofit- able prices of their other products, which have to face keen and well organized competition from Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and, above all, Denmark. They have been reminded times without number of the astonishing results of agricultural co-operation in Denmark, despite its relatively poor soil and its-remote- ness from British markets. They - have been told by many experts how the Dane has thriven by the help of co-operative marketing methods, and by the care which he bestows on grading his produce and maintaining its standards of quality. They have heard of the remarkable effects of co-operation in Ireland, thanks to the initiative of Sir Horace Plunkett, and, in the last two years, to the energy of the Free State Minister of Agriculture, who has now virtually compelled all the dairy farmers to become shareholders in the co-operative creameries and to accept State supervision of their butter production.
But all this accumulated evidence of what is possible for farmers who will work together has, to a large extent, been wasted on our individualist farmers, and the results of their indifference are seen in the profound depression that afflicts our farming industry. We can only hope that, if the principle of co-operative marketing is shown to work well in regard to milk, it may be gradually applied to other farm products. There is no other remedy for the ills of British farming. For, no matter how good the cultivation is, or how excellent the crop, the market price obtained alone determines the success or failure of the enterprise, and it is in his marketing that the average farmer fails because he acts alone.
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