Bridgetown.
A decision by the Pine Hill Dairy to operate its processing plant every other week starting in September has the future livelihood several dairy farmers in Barbados hang in the balance.
President of the Dairy and Beef Producers Association, Brian Allen told Trakker News that the Pine Hill Dairy’s decision to further cut their supplies would make it impossible for them to service their loans.
“The Dairy has already cut our quotas by 25 per cent and this latest measure would mean an additional 50 per cent reduction in our income. Some new farmers who have invested heavily in their business, can not now service their loans and that means the banks would take up their properties. Water bills and NIS, all of that done,” Allen said.
He stated that the dairy farmers already dire circumstance would be made even worse with the decision by the School Meals Department to cut the volume of milk it buys from Dairy, because this would trickle down to the producers.
According to Allen, the industry would not be able to survive the week-on-week-off supply to the Pine Dairy, which was announced during an emergency meeting held yesterday..
Pointing out that it would be impossible for this arrangement to work, Allen indicated that the industry could not continue to function under this for three months, in that it would have to dump milk and lose production.
“We would still have to feed the cows and milk the cows when the Dairy is shut down. If we don’t milk the cows they would get mastitis and die,” declared the association’s head. “No self respecting dairy company anywhere in the world, would implement such a measure. I can’t see industry surviving this for three months. We need to look at imports,” Allen said..
He noted that with their quotas already cut by 25 per cent, the latest reduction in supplies meant a further income cut of 50 per cent, leaving farmers with only 35 per cent income.
