DEAR SIR: I was relieved last week to see a letter in the Irish Farmers Journal about the so-called leading milk price from Kerry and the exceptionally onerous contract. I thought all milk producers must be asleep.

We milked 90 cows last year and keep very tight control on costs. Yet we are in March 2016 and we are still paying off bills from 2015. We only took drawings of €13,000 or €260 per week to live on. My husband works at least 100 hours per week and I help out and do all paperwork, etc. We also have teenage sons who work on the farm outside of school so in total, between us all, it would probably come to 140 hours a week. All of this for €260 in total.

The milk processors have a huge amount of land at their disposal and also human slaves to work it for them. And anyone who has signed the aforementioned Kerry contract has given Kerry the power until at least 2025 as this is the earliest that anyone can exit the contract. We control the milk production with the cows and yet we stand with cap in hand begging for a few very small scraps from the tables of the companies who have recently reported massive profits off the backs of farmers.

This is going to keep happening until farmers decide to stand up and control production. When production increased, milk price dropped. It is simply a case of not feeding concentrates to cows and culling any cows that put a farmer into the position of having to hire extra labour or rent land. We need to cut down the supply of milk and price should be negotiated before we sell our milk and not after. I do not know of any other job where you get paid for one year’s work out of every five as in dairy farming.

This is going to damage the future of the dairy industry as we have five sons and when they are all educated and in proper jobs, we will turn off the lights on our dairy farm for good. I am writing this on behalf of a lot of frustrated dairy farmers.