Beautiful piece of research, thanks for sharing. A combination of globalisation, organised retail and capitalism has collectively skewed milk production and consumption. I don’t think this is restricted to just the milk business though and this disruption in the last 10 years has been at play in a lot of sectors.
A lot of capacity gets built in a growing market, growing market encourages consumption, as the scale gets bigger and bigger, more players jump in and try to grab a larger market share, then comes the painful consolidation where only the largest and toughest survive due to economies of scale while the small ones who unwittingly participated in the early stages get assimilated/crushed by the behemoths. Globalisation makes the whole world a market and capacities that get built in one place to serve the whole world can get adversely affected by policy changes in another country and consequently the whole sector in the country undergoes pain.
I think instead of SMP which gets converted back to milk by recombining with butter fat, slowly more and more milk will be converted to Cheese and the per-capita consumption of Cheese will go up because capitalism causes these consumption patterns. I doubt if much can happen in terms of structural changes recommended in the piece. Keeping the business local and maintaining social and ecological resilience will take a lot of effort from the govt. The govt. will take the easy way out and throw money at the problem with a minimum support price causing further distortions in the long run, as they have done in the Sugar sector. Won’t be surprised if call for MSP comes from Shrimp farmers next if our marine product exports decline and prices crash. This mess is not restricted to just Milk unfortunately.
Again, thanks for the report. Its the best thing I have read today.