When agriculture minister David Littleproud said Australians should not take fresh milk on supermarket shelves for granted last week, he was met with disbelief.
"If they're not treated fairly, then we're going to hit a tipping point where there won't be enough dairy farmers in this country to continue to supply fresh milk to Australians right around right around the country," Mr Littleproud said.
He also took a swipe at processors and supermarkets, demanding they pass more money on to farmers.
Does he have a point or is he taking things too far?
To find out more, we asked the industry brains trust, the farmers, the processors and the supermarkets for their views.
Farmer view
Peak lobby body Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF) recently called for a 40 cent a litre retail levy on milk.
"There is no doubt that discount products have had a severe impact on the dairy industry throughout the past decade," an ADF spokesperson said.
"The reasons why a farmer chooses to leave the industry are often complex, but ... farmers face consistently high input costs while the retail price of discount milk has remained relatively flat since 2011."
The supermarket
Coles seemed to point the finger of blame at processors.
"Last year we introduced a direct contract model for Coles-brand milk in Victoria and central and southern NSW which allows us to deal directly with farmers rather than through a processor," a spokesperson said.
"This model provides farmers with certainty of income through longer-term contracts and delivers some of the highest farmgate prices in the industry.
"The arrangement is working well and we're looking to roll it out more broadly across other states.
"Coles is also committed to ensuring Australians have access to affordable household staples, particularly at a time when hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs.
"Widespread increases in dairy prices risk harming the industry by reducing demand for Australian dairy product and making them uncompetitive against cheaper imported products."
It did not respond to follow-up questions about the feasibility of importing fresh milk.
The processors
Processor peak body Australian Dairy Products Federation chair Grant Crothers took a positive view.
"Let's start by celebrating the growth in milk in parts of the southern region," he said.
"And it's wonderful that we've got record farmgate milk prices and excellent seasonal conditions that are giving many dairy farmers a great year.
"Unfortunately, we live in a diverse country and we can't say that those conditions are unilateral across the nation.
"But for many, many dairy farmers in the southern region, which produces something like 75pc of the nation's milk, it's true."
He said a levy on fresh, white supermarket-branded milk would only represent about 9pc of the milk produced by Australian farmers.
It could also have serious implications.
"What the minister and ADF are calling for is a price increase on 750 million litres and also, by inference, the introduction of the 'haves and the have-nots' because it is such a state issue," Mr Crothers said.
While the cost of production varied enormously around Australia, retailers were "wedded" to a uniform retail milk price.
"I dare say, in Harvey Bay that bananas are a lot cheaper than they are in Hawthorn or in Hamilton," he said.
"But generic milk is the same price.
"Processors have no control over that have no influence over that.
"They don't have any influence on the production costs and they don't have any influence on a retailer's selling price."
Asked why supermarkets could pay farmers more for milk than processors, Mr Crothers was direct.
"There's a very small premium and they're in a very stable market that's like a one-trick pony: it does one thing, at one price, every day of the year," he said.
"There's no volatility within reason, there's no foreign exchange risk, there is no competition from New Zealand, America or Europe, there is no innovation.
"And they will decide their own retail margins on a product by product basis, so they have a lot of influence.
"If the industry wants us to revert to being a white-milk-only market without innovation, with a ceiling on consumption, then that's up to government to structure accordingly."
Brains trust
According to Dairy Australia's InFocus report, there were 486 fewer registered dairy farms in 2018/19, something DA put down to, "a range of factors including drought conditions in some regions, land competition from other agricultural sectors and an ongoing shift to larger farms."
In fact, all the provisional industry-level metrics for 2018/19 are grim reading.
That 9pc drop in dairy farm numbers is the highest recorded annual exodus, production is down 6pc, and cow numbers are down 7pc off an already weakened base following the 8pc national cull in the crisis year of 2015/16.
In March, Dairy Australia forecast production of 8.35 and 8.5 billion litres, the lowest since 1995.
But what matters most to dairy farmers, and underpins the sustainability of the industry, is farm profitability.
And, on that crucial point, we're largely in the dark.
Asked how the cost of production compares with the farmgate milk price, DA noted farmgate prices varied widely between farms and across the year, even within regions.
It said current full-season farmgate prices for southern, export focused regions and WA ranged from around $6.60 a kilogram of milk solids to $7.50/kgMS, roughly 51 to 58c/L.
Prices in the fresh milk regions were generally in the $7.50 to $9.40/kgMS range, or 58-72c/L.
"Most key drivers of cost of production remained at similar levels to the 2018/19 equivalents reported in the Dairy Farm Monitor Project results (accessible on the DA website)," a spokesperson said.
"Figures for 2019/20 will be compiled and released once the season's costs and milk payments are finalised."
The DFMP put the average cost of production for the farms it surveyed at $6.50/kgMS.
Unfortunately, the DFMP isn't representative, report author Clare Waterman agreed.
"This is 75 farms that we sample to see what's happened on those farms - we definitely want to avoid drawing conclusions about farms across the industry."
But are we close to losing the ability to put fresh milk on supermarket shelves? DA's not convinced.
"We don't see a risk to Australia's fresh milk supply. Australia will produce around 8.5 billion litres of milk in the 2019/20 season, 25-30pc will be sold as drinking milk," a spokesperson said.
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