The Australian Dairy industry is a large contributor to the development of Australian agriculture industry with the majority of Aussies drinking milk every day as a part of their daily routine.
As dairy is one of Australia’s most important rural industries, it produced around 9 billion litres of milk in 2016-17 (NFF) and directly employing approximately 42,000 people.
It is a staggering amount of employees with the Australian agriculture industry contributing a touch over 300,000 employees industry-wide. With the number of employees within the dairy industry, it makes a healthy contribution to ensure employment is viable within the rural areas of Australia. Although with the large workforce it is a little one-sided with the majority of milk production occurring on the south-east seaboard in Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania. With the climate suiting the cycle of a dairy with the ability to grow pastures in order to produce the best milk.
As seen with the current competitions between the major supermarkets the consumer saw the decrease in the price of milk with this hurting most at the farm gate. With the milk price dropping to $1.00/litre it was not what farmers had in mind. With the difficulties of a low price had seen the farmers having to wait for payment on their milk regardless of pricing. This had some dairy farmers looking for another option.
Australia exports approximately 37 percent of its milk production, with exports valued at $3 billion in 2016-17.
Department of Agriculture and Water Resources
A large proportion of exports are in the form of value-added products such as cheese, butter, ultra-heat treated milk, and milk powders. Australian dairy is exported around the world. The national services body for the Australian dairy industry is Dairy Australia, the industry-owned national service organisation funded by farmer levies, with matching research and development funds from the Australian Government.
Prize winning cow, Sydney Royal Easter Show
Dairy Australia has eight Regional Development Programs (RDPs) that cater to local dairy farmer needs in:
The Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF) is the national advocacy body, which represents dairy farmers around Australia. The Dairy industry has The Australian Dairy Products Federation (ADPF) as the peak policy body for commercial/non-farm members of the Australian dairy industry and is open to entities operating in Australia that are engaged in the manufacture, marketing or trading of dairy products and/or dairy-related products. This body allows off-farm businesses the ability to work within the dairy industry at a hands-on level.
This is done through large manufactures who may process the region’s milk daily. Together they form the Australian Dairy Industry Council. The partnership between the two bodies allows them to improve the entire value chain sustainability and profitability. Farms Advice particularly interested in how the dairy industry is able to supply Australia with its milk for its daily coffee. We will dive into this within the coming year to analyse different processes that can be transferred into similar industries with a featured case study.
Next Article we will look at the changes that dairy farmers faced and how they were able to overcome the different obstacles to start a thriving business in what should be a un-secure time within the dairy industry. If you have further information on this topic then do get in touch.
Let us know if you’re a dairy and we can put you in our directory.
