PLANS are afoot to improve farmgate prices for Cumbria’s dairy farmers with a regional milk brand.

The county is one of the largest milk-producing areas in Britain, but its dairy farmers, like their counterparts across the country, have for years been struggling against low prices paid to producers. In the last ten years, dairy farmers have seen a drop of around ten pence per litre in farmgate prices and they now receive around 17 pence per litre.

In an effort to redress the balance, dairy farmers are being invited by the Rural Futures project to attend two open meetings to explore the idea of a Cumbrian milk brand to emulate the recent successes of local meat branding initiatives in the county.

The first meeting will be next Monday, June 16, at 7.30pm at the Crooklands Hotel, Crooklands. The second is at The Shepherds Inn at Carlisle Auction Mart on June 23.

Rural Futures was set up by various groups, including The National Trust, YFCs, the Small and Family Farms Alliance and Friends of the Earth, to help sustain rural communities and protect the countryside.

Its south Cumbrian co-ordinator, Robert Burrow, himself a former dairy farmer, explained: “We want producers from across the county to get together with us to discuss what opportunities there are for a Cumbrian Brand, whether it could be geographically or environmentally based and what scope there is for adding value to locally-produced milk.” Rural Futures has already examined similar initiatives such as Bowland Fresh Milk, which is stocked in Booths supermarkets and pays the producers involved a premium for their milk, and believes there may be scope for something similar in Cumbria.

As Mr Burrow pointed out, any Cumbria brand would have to be sold beyond the county’s borders because the local consumers only account for around eight per cent of the milk produced here. But he said the county, with its lakes and mountains, had an eminently marketable image that could play well with the wider public.

“If it can work for meat, why can’t it work for milk and dairy products?” he said.

Rachel Fellows, spokesman for Asda, said the company was increasingly stocking locally-branded dairy goods in its stores, including Lune Valley Milk at Lancaster, and would be interested in talking to producer groups setting up similar initiatives.

“Where we have a national brand and a locally-sourced alternative, be it milk, ice cream or pretty much anything, the locally-sourced brand will outsell the national brand in virtually every case,” she said.

She explained that in Cornwall one local brand of clotted cream outsold Asda’s own brand by 50-to-one, and in other areas local ice creams easily outsold international brands such as Haagen Daas.

She said that although the consumer was the ultimate arbiter of what lines Asda stores carried, the company tried to help local brands which made it to the shelf gain a foothold in the market.

The meetings at the Crooklands Hotel on June 16 and the Shepherds Inn on June 23 both start at 7.30pm and are open to all Cumbrian dairy producers. For more information call Robert Burrow on 01524-822454 or Brian Armstrong on 01768-898453.