The Leongatha Murray Goulburn supplier said there was no need for payment systems to be “so hard to work out”. He said changes would help make the way farmers were paid for milk more equitable across large and small milk producers.
Trevor, who milks 145 cows, said a simpler payment structure could benefit him financially and make it easier to run his business.
Ideally he would like to see productivity incentives abolished or reduced.
“It would make it fairer between bigger and smaller farmers,” he said. “They don’t have it in New Zealand and they have a lot of bigger farmers. It disadvantages the smaller farmers.”
Trevor said he would like to see a flat price paid all year round, but understood that this could encourage a spring peak of milk into processors.
With this in mind, and if it helped get payment structure change, he would support a slightly lower price for the three months of spring and the same price for the rest of the season.
Making payment structure more equitable would help morale, according to Trevor.
“There’d be a better feeling about the industry,” he said. “Some people are down in the dumps, doing it hard with the poor season. The payment system — trying to figure out how it works and what they are getting next month — it’s another layer of complexity we don’t need.”
By: Simone Smith
Source: The Weekly Times
Link: https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/agribusiness/dairy/dairy-payment-simpler-system-will-boost-morale/news-story/de7bd06d7b680a57b38c7817c2052a96