I was interested to read in todays press (DN) that the price of milk will go up by 1 kronor per litre.
Two things really surprised me.
- The Swedish dairy farmer only get 1.2 SEK for every litre of milk
- The MD and the Chairman of Milko wrote a piece for Dagens Nyheter announcing the rise and why they were doing it.
I believe a pint of milk is around 10 SEK so the Swedish Dairy farmer only gets around 10% of what he/she has produced. This does surprise me
Secondly I think its great that the management of Milko have bothered to write an article explaining the charge and where its going. Personally I have no problem playing an extra kronor per litre to help Swedish milk farmers.
I was also interested to read that a survey commissioned by Milko showed that the greatest support for this was with young people (around 94%), of course the people of Northern Sweden backed it by 96% and overall 42% of Swedes thought that the price of milk is cheap compared with what you get and only 8% thought it was already too expensive.
There is a lot of foreign milk being sold in supermarkets but I will do my best to ensure I buy Swedish!
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I love beefs / meats etc … not a great fan of milk, but understand its importance ….
However I wonder if we will ever see an environmental tax on cow based products considering the amount of pollution coming from cows. ?
I also agree, keep swedish milk swedish.
I cant even imagine or want to meet the consumers who think milk is too expensive.
Sweden doesnt have that many great resources for consumption based products …. so it needs to keep anything it can in this field (yes, there is a pun in that LOL )
First of, I’m guessing that you don’t buy milk that often? An imperial pint is just under 0.6 liter and for 10 kr I’d get 1,5 liters (stores sell milk pretty much at cost). Or maybe you simply make so much money that you don’t ever bother looking at the price of the things you buy?
Second, you lost a bit in translation there. And of course, I do believe that there was some intentional misleading done in that article. Nowhere in that article is it said that the dairy farmer gets only 1,2kr per liter – although that’s probably what you’re intended to think. It does claim that is on average how much is left to cover such costs as electricity etc. after the cost of food has been deducted.
That being said: I do think that a lot of farmers are having a tough time right now. During the “good times” a few years ago, times were very good indeed for dairy farmers. One of the things that really made the prices skyrocket was that the (farmer owned) dairy’s turned milk into milk powder which was then exported to china. I don’t know how well the Chinese paid for this – but I do know that the dairy’s (and farmers) gained plenty on the resulting massive price hikes on dairy products for European consumers. Prince on farmland also went though the roof, at least here in Sweden. The same with sales of farm equipment like tractors etc.
Now times are not as good and prices for the farmers have gone down. Is this not the same for a lot of businesses? The difference is that the farming business is now getting humongous price supports from the European consumers/taxpayers in the form of EU buying up immense quantities of butter and milk powder to take it off the market and help keep prices up.
For someone who seems to consider himself a liberal, you sure do sport some seriously anti-liberal attitudes at times.
Oh, and you also missed the really fine print in that article…the print that was so small that it wasn’t even there. The dairy farmers won’t actually get 1kr more per liter milk they sell to Milko. Estimates say that it’ll end up being something like 10-15 öre per kilo (0,10-0,15 kr/liter).
Thanks for the post Jacob. This blog is all about different views and I am happy to stand corrected especially when it comes to translation.
You sound like my ex who also thought I should be more careful with my spending. I just find since living in Sweden (barring my Sunday lunch comparison the other week) I rarely calculate the costs. I do actually buy milk very often as I drink tea with mjölk by the boatload.
Farmers moaning during the bad times is not a Swedish thing of course. Just look at the French farmers and in the UK they are well known for moaning.
Why is it anti-liberal to suggest I am happy paying more for my milk if more goes to the farmer? I am very pro-free market and am making my own decision. If there was say Polish milk on sale that was cheaper I wouldn’t buy because being a Liberal doesn’t mean you cant support your own country.
Liberalism has different meanings (often Liberals in the same Party don’t agree which is good and bad!). So am keen to find out what other areas you think I am anti-liberal. Dont get me wrong I am not the perfect liberal by any means