If the Greens showed some guts maybe they'd get a few votes. Yes the dairy industry is getting screwed by the nasty supermarkets, but they're dealing with the devil.

These 'poor' farmers are the same folk that are going to start killing badgers (legally for a change), that also force animals into pregnancy again and again until they're worn out and are shipped to the nearest slaughterhouse. The unwanted male calves are also kept in appalling conditions and killed for veal. It's a disgusting way to treat sentient living beings.

The supermarkets won't destroy an important market such as dairy. But they'll squeeze a bit more out of them. Maybe the dairy farmers will have to up the quota of antibiotics and growth hormones shoved into unconsenting animals to try and drive profitability.

Eitherway, the real sufferers are being neglected whilst idiots play petty politics over $$$.

The supermarkets aren't the devil!
They have no guns. They can't force anyone to do anything, unlike the state.

Milk prices are too low because supply is greater than demand.
If the farmers really think that this isn't the case, and the supermarkets are just being greedy, why don't they try selling it direct to the consumers, themselves?

Whatever next??
State intervention, of cause!
Agricultural policy, socialised redistribution of wealth from those who supply what people want, to those who supply what people don't want.

Agree that the real sufferers in all this are the cows. And ultimately we want an end to all dairy farming.

But... supermarkets driving prices down is one of the pressures leading to the intensification of dairy farming, leading to worse conditions for the animals. That and the economic pressures of capitalism itself. So while dairy farming is inherently unethical, maybe it's better for the cows (in a minor, reformist, way) if the farmers win out against the supermarkets.

but if they descended en mass to the olympic park in trucks and tractors this friday or any day of the idiot games, I'd have a tiny bit of respect for the inbred fuckers they are.

Yeah, a local politician trying to challenge police racism and injustices through the oversight body Metropolitan Police Authority, boo hiss!!