It is heartwarming to witness the outpouring of retail love for the UK’s milk producers this week, as Tesco agreed to pay its suppliers 4p more a litre to avoid sector meltdown.
With incredible numbers of farmers leaving the milk industry every week, it is not before time.
Would it be too much to pray for this Easter that this gesture, which follows similar pledges by Waitrose and M&S and a promise by Sainsbury’s to pay more for higher quality milk, signals a watershed in the UK supermarkets’ dealings with their domestic supply base?
It depends on individual experience, of course, but not many fresh produce growers in the UK would argue that they have yet plummeted to the depths of their dairy cousins. Even with vegetable prices that remain at the levels of the 1970s, this industry has not suffered to the same extent. Yet.
The yet is very important. Because with every year of price reductions for the grower base, the supermarkets are, en masse, squeezing the lifeblood out of their increasingly crucial local supply chain. At the same time, they make very public statements of intent on local and British sourcing, seemingly oblivious to the damage that shareholder-obsessed strategies are having on their ability to carry out their puffed-up promises.
They are not oblivious. They know exactly what is happening. But which of the big four has the courage to truly break rank for the good of its suppliers?