ptember, Australian Dairy Farmers, in conjunction with the wider Australian farming community will call on Australians to send a tweet or upload a selfie holding a handwritten sign with a positive message incorporating the #FTA4dairy to social media using the #FTA4dairy and #FTA4farmers hashtags.The campaign says that the absence of a FTA with China is costing Australian dairy farmers over $30 million a year, money that it says could be put back into local dairy farm communities to make Australia more competitive on the global market.
For the past six years, New Zealand has enjoyed a lucrative free trade agreement (FTA) with China that has seen its exports soar to grab a global market share of 37 per cent versus Australia’s seven per cent.
The demand for dairy in China has been described by Bega Cheese as ‘insatiable’, with the country’s local milk production struggling under structural change in the supply chain.
In May, Norco began exporting fresh milk to China, in a plan to take milk from Australian dairy farms to Chinese tables within seven days.
The dairy co-operative plans to export 20 million litres of fresh milk in the next 12 months, which will sell for as much as $8 a litre.
Pactum Dairy Group (PDG) has also entered the Chinese market, and signed a strategic supply agreement between Shepparton based PDG and China’s Bright Dairy last month.
