Milk Crisis Highlights Our Dilemmas

Listening to the radio this morning the complexity of our current position came into full focus. Two stories side by side on the radio - one about the IPCC stressing the need not only to reduce emissions but to urgently start removing existing carbon from the atmosphere, and the escalation in the price of milk .

The cost of living crisis made worse by the climate crisis, the solution for farmers making the climate crisis worse....and that's before you factor in the issue of cow's own emissions.

The farmers have become so reliant on their yield because the price they achieve for a pint of milk is so low that they use vast quantities of fertilisers. One farmer interviewed said his delivery of fertiliser had gone from ￡7,000 to ￡28,000 and without it he simply didn't have a dairy farm, but with the price hike (and that's without the cost of fuel for his equipment) he couldn't make money and would have to consider the future of his cows. If he didnt use fertiliser on his fields, the cows wouldn't produce enough milk to cover their costs, but by fertilising fields to improve the grass, the climate impact of the farm is far higher.

The cost of fertiliser has increased partly due to the war in Ukraine but this masks the fact that energy prices have been rising steeply since Covid and that even if they weren't the planetary need for us to reduce our production and use of fossil fuels means that the prices would have shot up in the very near future

Are we seeing a glimpse of the future when carbon pricing will be inevitable and the true 'polluter pays' principle becomes the norm?

Farmers are now being offered incentives to use fewer pollutants on the land, to support the capture of carbon in the soil by preventing run off and to encourage biodiversity. All good news - especially for those of us campaigning for cleaner rivers and supporting our bees - but back to the milk - a smaller yield means higher prices and when this affects a staple like milk its going to hurt everyone.

88% of households buy milk, and I am no different. My family gets through at least 10 pints a week - the children drink hot chocolate rather than (increasingly expensive) pure juice or (unhealthy) fizzy drinks. We also get through two blocks of cheese - for pasta sauces, toasties, jacket potatoes and evening snacks - and then there are yoghurts and ice cream. My dairy budget currently stands at about ￡12 per week, if that doubles the impact will be really noticeable and if it hurts me, then what about those who are already choosing between heating and eating?

Some will say the answer is to go vegan, with the added benefit of less burping cows, but i don't think its that simple. We need to pause and reflect on our lifestyles for sure, think about the true cost of food but swapping semi-skimmed for oat milk on your cereal isn't really going to help.

After all that fertiliser will be working overtime if we need to quadruple oat production or ship in boatloads of extra fruit in the winter to replace different food groups.        

• We need to face up to the need to build wind farms both onshore and offshore, tell those who don't want to see them on the hills that time has run out.
• We need solar on our roofs and skill up our young people as installers and insulators so we can act rapidly at scale so fossil fuel energy can be used for those processes for which we don't yet have an alternative.
• We need to rethink our relationship with plastic - a wonderful resource for longevity but needs urgent outlaw for single use .... what use is banning straws and plastic bags when we are STILL letting people throw away bottles from water. The new proposals in the EU around the circular economy look encouraging and I hope the UK follows suit urgently.

Domestically I welcome the Environment Act but its now 2022 and we still haven't seen the detail around how we standardise recycling, the deposit return scheme is still just an idea. The Future Homes Standard should be introduced by 2025 but today homes will be approved without energy generation, using gas and designed around private cars and does anyone know what happened to the Planning White Paper!

As the climate and cost of living crises clash there is something of an irony that Mrs Thatcher who was known as the 'milk snatcher' saw the privatisation of the energy companies and we are now living under a Thatcher-loving Prime Minister as we see those energy companies making 'super-profits' while families sit in the cold not even able to warm up with a milky drink.