Fourth generation dairy farmer Doug Chant attended the first Australian Dairy Plan workshop in Colac last week and said it was farmers who needed the most support.
“This crisis has been going on for eight years,” he said.
“We had 23,000 dairy farmers in Australia and now we are down to about 5000.
“Something is not working and it needs to be addressed.”
Mr Chant said Dairy Australia had failed the industry.
“We did have a model that worked and that was the Victorian Dairy Industry Authority, which was made up of grassroots farmers and government,” he said.
“The advantage of that was the government could see a problem happening at the same time everyone else could, not six years down the track.”
As an immediate solution to the dairy crisis, Mr Chant suggested dispersing money being kept in a Gardiner Foundation fund to struggling farmers.
“VDIA owned the Big M brand — which was established by using farmer funds to form the flavoured milk market,” he said. “After VDIA wound up, the Big M brand needed to be sold off, which it was for $62 million.”
Mr Chant said money from the sale was put into a trust to help the industry.
“As a previous director of the foundation, I think the money should now go out to farmers,” he said.
“Dairy Food Safety has every farm registered. Each farm has a licence so if they were to go back at least five or 10 years, they can identify farms and give them a share of that fund. “It would be the quickest source of funding.”
Mr Chant said the industry was at the “beck and call” of supermarkets and overseas factories and farmer overheads and costs were “extremely high”.
“Yet we have to compete against butter coming in from New Zealand and other countries who have low production overheads and who are also being subsidised by their governments,” he said.