Any farmers, friends of farmers on here know what the guys are getting for raw milk. I believe price varies slightly depending on bacteria counts, fat and other bits.
One guy I know (Dutch Holsteins) is getting R3.00 a liter but loses 5c a liter for pick up fee so effectively gets R2.95 (Clover)
Another guy I know (Jerseys) has been offered R3.40 (Clover).
That's quite a difference... I can only assume the price will be going up for all the Clover suppliers soon. Beans what type of cattle does you friend have? Friesland? Who does he supply?
Been out of the game too long to even know what they're getting now.
Jersey's are known to give more butter fat and cream. But for there to be such a huge gap in pricing between that Holstein price you mention to the Jersey, cannot be based on that alone.
Main deal is volume. And the higher the volume, the cheaper usually.
Why don't the farmers go directly to the consumers? Sort of like their own fruit & veg in every town. It might be a logistical nightmare, but it can be done. Just fruits, vegetables, meat and milk. And they must agree not to push their profit margin above a certain %, otherwise they will also end up milking us.
That'd be a nightmare, as you say.
For dairy farmers to try and break into the market, will be hellish.
Firstly, they don't have the expertise or knowledge to pasteurise and produce dairy products on the scale that the Clover's or Parmalat's of this world do.
There's a lot of R&D that goes into dairy products wrt to manufacturing, packaging and selling.
Just look at the barrage of ads from the 2 dairies I mentioned, have on TV.
Parmalat going about designing (or finding) caps that make it easier to pour - dairy farmers are not gonna be doing that.
Sure there are smaller dairy farmers selling directly to the community shops, but that's likely only ever to be fresh milk.
Custard, flavoured yoghurts, cream and all the rest? A 15000 litre a day (which is big) dairy farmer can't keep a suburb happy or rather supplied with all of that and fresh milk.
I know of a few smaller dairies, actual milk farmers here in Cape Town that supply straight to the market, but all they do is fresh milk. That includes them doing pasteurising, bottling and packaging of sachets. They may have diversified with juice and perhaps Tolla's and a few others are doing cream. But that'd be the end of their range.
To supply at the levels that Clover and Parmalat do in SA - dairy farmers will have to put themselves into more debt, which if you take into the consideration the age of dairy farmers (which I think is 40-70) is not something they're wanting to do in this financial climate.
They've just gotta diversify the nature of the farm and do meat as well to stay alive.
Its no picnic being a dairy farmer - unless you're pushing between 15-30k litres of milk a day and making 10c-15c profit. Then you're good.
EDIT: Hell even that's not really a good number. But if its R135k net profit, then you're sitting pretty.
Hell - I'm rambling about this stuff again. Actually miss the trade
Chrissy - wrt to fruit veg and meat - Fruit&Veg City has the biggest share and there are farmers that are involved there directly with that brand making money. But Fruit&Veg City has the greatest market share and the way that Food Lover's Markets are popping up, will make it tough for farmers. A lot of farmers probably have contracts with Fruit&Veg anyway.
Fruit farmers, big scale fruit farmers, don't even really concern themselves with the local market. All A grade fruit gets exported. Whatever's not cutting the grade for the overseas market gets flogged to Fruit&Veg and the rest of the country.
Don't believe Fruit&Veg City when they say they've negotiated the best for us, in there TV ads. Its BS
