Is it over yet?
Arla's presentation at EDA 2018
Being at the European Dairy Association’s Annual Convention in Dublin last week, while the ongoing circus that was the latest in Britain’s undignifed exit from the European Union was going on in London, was a surreal affair. It was compounded by me not reading the papers or listening to the news on the way over. Speakers rewrote their presentations and the first session was dedicated to the Conservative mess that is the procedure (Does it really have to be this painful? Is Theresa May the only adult in the room? And remind me who the DUP are again and why they’re not grabbing the best deal of the whole mess? Answers on a postcard.).
People who run dairy plants are wringing their hands and asking when they were going to get something solid that they could at least plan ahead with, or prepare for. As Kasper Nielsen of Arla Foods pointed out, with only 134 days left, there is not a lot of time to decide things on one business. Of course, as I write this there’s even less time. We will not even get on the subject of the minister who had no idea Dover was such a busy port of entry from the EU. That is for another blog.
Then happily, everyone got on with the business of what other issues are in the world of dairy. Futures contracts were discussed. Unfortunately, the EU does not have the same transparency that the US has with its mandatory weekly registers of how much milk was sold and for what price. The Milk Market Observatory is still a work in progress, but the speakers agreed that more people are open to the idea of the futures contracts.
As one speaker noted, the time of EU intervention saving dairy prices are over, and where farmers are burning tyres and protesting. I do think there may be a few tyres burnt in the coming year, but I am not quite sure who will be doing the burning. No doubt the general public will be, in protest at the continual noise and chaos from Westminster, signifying nothing
