DAIRY FARMERS in Barbados in general are very dedicated. We have two farmers that have been in business less than five years and everybody else has been in business for over 25 years.
The dairy farmers in Barbados are professionals who know what they are doing. They have been doing it for long enough. The ones that have survived are the efficient ones.
What we have seen now in the dairy industry as well, it’s almost like North America. You are getting the children involved. There are at least six or seven dairy farms in Barbados where the sons and daughters of the owners are now working.
There are no courses on dairy farming in Barbados. There is nowhere you can go and learn dairy farming in Barbados so to find staff you have to actually bring on a staff member, teach them. Then they find out how much hard work it is and they usually leave, but the children, being around the farm, they learn it naturally.
There are 18 professionals now. The milk is collected by a tanker from our coolers every day. The milk is tested every day by Pine Hill Dairy and Pine Hill Dairy has 18 professionals to deal with.
We are not as high tech as other places in the world, but some of these huge milk factories overseas, where they are milking 5 000 cows, the machines work 24 hours a day and then there is the quality of the milk and the way they treat the cows.
We cannot treat our cows like that here. We cannot replace our cows very easily because it’s very difficult to bring in cows into Barbados because of our tick problem.
If one little tick bites a cow it is dead and about $5 000 or $6 000 is down the drain, so we have to take care of our cows and make them last as long as possible. So our cows are very humanely treated and the public needs to know that.
This new cess on imported milk products, if it works how it is supposed to work, how we have presented it and how the Minister of Finance sees it, is that the farmers will get a slight increase in money paid, the Bajan public will get a decrease in the price of milk and Pine Hill Dairy should be more profitable.
A lot of people are asking how that will work, where everybody wins. Well, it’s all of the milk substitutes, the milk powder and so on, any powder-based milk that comes in the island from even Trinidad and Jamaica have to pay a ten per cent cess, whereas our local milk only has to pay five per cent because it is fresh milk. So it’s well designed and its World Trade Organisation compliant.
The dairy board is something that we have been looking at for years. It would be an independent body, which would have both farmers and processors on it and a Government mediator.
And that dairy board would govern the industry, whereas at the moment Pine Hill Dairy governs the industry.
Brian Allan is president of the Barbados Beef and Dairy Producers Association.
