The leadership of the dairy branch of the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) has resigned en masse to join a new organisation.

The new lobby group – Dairy Farmers Victoria – is led by Colac dairy farmer Mark Billing, who this morning announced his resignation as president of VFF commodity group United Dairyfarmers of Victoria (UDV).

All but two of the UDV Policy Council members have followed him out the door to join the new group.

Dairy Farmers Victoria was registered with Consumer Affairs Victoria in July, and today has launched a website and membership drive.

It comes after months of internal and external turmoil for the VFF and its president Emma Germano, who is also facing a revolt from Grains Group members.

‘No value for money’

Mark Billing said the VFF had not been delivering dairy farmers value for their membership dollars, which are paid at a rate of $800 per million litres of milk produced.

“This has been a long time coming; we’ve been trying to talk to VFF over a long period of time but unfortunately the VFF leadership has made a decision not to sit down and talk to us and look at a way forward,” he said.

“There is a lack of dairy farmer levy money coming back to the commodity to do policy development and advocacy.

“There’s around $950,000 of dairy farmers’ money that is collected … and of that, $10,000 came back to the commodity to run our commodity group for the year.”

In a letter to members today, the VFF rejected this and said “the cost of running the VFF-UDV is about 45 per cent of VFF-UDV contributions”.

Mr Billing said there had been a lack of support from the VFF for industry-specific issues.

“This is the problem with the current leadership of the VFF, that they don’t understand the complexities and the nuances in each of the commodities,” he said.

He said there had been a lack of consultation with members over changes to the organisation, including a rewrite of the constitution.

“Does the VFF need modification? Yes it does,” he said.

“Does the constitution need to be reformed? Yes it does, but the way it’s been done by this current leadership has left a lot of members behind, and I think that’s the biggest issue the VFF is facing right now.”

Membership drive

Dairy Farmers Victoria already has around 50 members and is targeting 1,000 within 12 months, hoping to attract all current UDV members along with others in the industry.

“We’re under no illusion that we’ll need members to create a strong organisation,” Mr Billing said.

“Initially there will be a foundation subscription of $500 per business, and then early next year we’ll be looking at a levy-based membership.

“We’d like to think that once we have the membership growing we’ll have staff in the regions working direct with the membership, picking up issues and advocating on behalf of Victoria’s fairy farmers.”

Mr Billing said he believed UDV had around 800 members, but that number had been falling in recent months.

Victoria has around 3,000 dairy farms and accounts for about 60 per cent of national milk production.

Mr Billing said the group would resume financial contributions to national advocacy group Australian Dairy Farmers, after the VFF decided in October last year to cease paying its annual bill of $344,000.

“Dairy Farmers Victoria is willing and able to talk to ADF and our support will come through in the form of money and membership,” he said.

VFF rejects criticism

In its letter to members, the VFF said it rejected criticism it had not advocated effectively on behalf of dairy farmers.

“The old ‘club’ style of advocacy no longer works,” the letter stated.

“Rather than promoting a cycle of expensive meetings of largely ineffective, continuous discussion and constant ‘reviews’ of dairy advocacy with no decisions or changes made, we must be focused on outcomes for dairy farmers.

“The VFF has significant feedback from VFF-UDV members that the actions of the majority of VFF-UDV councillors did not seek to represent their views when creating a ‘breakaway’ dairy group.

“They do not want more farmer advocacy groups splitting the resources and the ability to influence outcomes, there is already more than 200 groups doing this in Australia.”

The VFF has also launched a survey of dairy farmers’ views on the future role of the UDV.