DEAR SIR:

On Thursday 5 May, Glanbia Co-operative Society will hold its AGM in Kilkenny. Of the 16,230 members, about 60% will not be informed of this meeting and will not be allowed to attend, even though decisions will be made about their shareholding.

From the outset, this letter is not about the price of milk, deplorable as it is, but rather it is about how it’s paid for and by whom.

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In farming circles there is much talk of the pay of chief executives and board members of major food companies. We hear of salaries of €500,000 or sometimes packages running into millions.

In the case of Glanbia, farmers might think that the salaries of the top management are astronomical and indeed they are from a farming perspective. On the other hand, from a company point of view, they are worth every penny.

Why, you may well ask? They have convinced farmers to put over €25m of their own money towards buying their own milk this year.

For the current month, I believe that farmers are going to contribute 2c towards the cost of a litre of milk. That is almost 10% of the price.

You couldn’t make this up. This is akin to beef farmers saying to the meat industry, we know times are tough so you pay us €4/kg and we will give you back 40c.

But it gets worse. It is totally unacceptable that dry shareholders’ funds are also used for this purpose. If dairy farmers are happy to sell their own shares to fund the purchase of their own milk, then so be it, but I doubt that very many are. On the other hand, dry shareholders will not stand idly by and watch a shareholding that they built up over many years be used in this way.

It is high time that board members stood up and were counted.

The co-operative ethos was that every member had a voice but sadly this is no longer the case in Glanbia. Most dry shareholders were disenfranchised some years ago, even though many of them are active farmers. It’s a strange situation where you can take someone’s vote away and then sell their shares. I would have thought the whole idea of a co-operative was to protect the weak and vulnerable. How times have changed.

At this stage the proper thing to do is to spin out the remaining share in Glanbia to the shareholders. Otherwise, the urge to keep dipping into shareholders’ funds is irresistible to management. It fosters inefficiency. It’s true what they say: “You don’t miss a slice off a cut loaf.”