I think for me, the most important and encouraging thing I get from this incredible message from Maleny Dairies is that change for the better is indeed possible. It is unlikely to come from any Government or corporation, rather it will come from ordinary people who see a need for something to be done and going out and getting it done.
I’ve heard it said that when we take our business away from a less than ethical company and move it to a more sustainable and ethical company, the folks at the bottom of the supply chain that are already getting hit the hardest will get hit even harder… Whilst this is true short term, what Maleny Dairies has shown us is that if we take our business away from the cheaper milks and move it to the more expensive, fairer priced milks; the extra demand has to come from somewhere and in this instance, the result is that they are taking on extra farms to keep up with demand.
This is allowing a family to return to the land and re-open the farm!
Suddenly, Baptist World Aid Australia’s Ethical Shopping Guides don’t seem like wishful thinking. Sure, if there are only a few people, not much is going to change but if we all took stock of what we were buying then big things could happen.
It’s not even all that difficult to do really. It may surprise you but most of the big brands you probably use, received at least a B and have improved their scores significantly since the first Ethical Shopping Guide including but not limited to: Apple Inc., Dell, HP, LG Australia, Microsoft, Moto, Samsung Australia.
Will there be brands that we might have to part ways with? Most certainly, it’s not always easy to do the right thing but it can be worth it in the long term.
– The above text used with permission from Matthew G.
Written in response to Maleny Dairies Post on Facebook
It has been 9 days since the last major business update to you from Maleny Dairies. What a 9 days it has been. We promised increased traceability around our operations as you continued to buy our Yoghurt, Custard and Milk.
This is the beginning of the fourth week in spiked sales.
- First week sales jumped 10%.
- Second week jumped 13% on top of the 10%.
- Last week sales was a staggering 34% bigger again.
In other words sales are about 66% bigger!
We here at Maleny Dairies have said from the start that it doesn’t matter if these sales are a one off or permanent. We thank you as do our farmers.
As a direct result of your efforts to buy our products we can inform you that we are talking to 2 new farming families. One family will return to Dairy Farming in the Mary Valley. A property previously closed and sold. They are going to start tentatively on the 1st July.
They are very excited and so are we. We are taking a bit of a risk that these sales are going to stay, but we believe…we always have! The second farm is a definite maybe because the worse thing we can do to a farming family is to take them on and then drop them later because we got the numbers wrong. A false dawn. So we have started talking and we will wait and see.
We are slow to take on new farms because we now guarantee two things.
1. Once with us we won’t drop them over our companies net profit.
2. We guarantee their base price for milk and that once set that price never goes backwards.
These 2 guarantees give farming families certainty. We know that our prices are setting the benchmark and we would like you to know that we are committed to making them higher. Our current farmers are very excited about the milk being sold. Should these wonderful sales continue we believe we can put ourselves in a position to also pay our current farmers more. But right now we are concentrating on getting the timing right to bring on more farming families to match these sales.
We will provide you with more information on our progress in the coming weeks. You are all making a massive difference. If sales stay at this level we estimate we need 3 more farms. This is just unheard of in our industry. Dairy Farming is unbelievably hard, it really is. We can pass on to you one more important thing on this post. Our farmers are ending their day with a bit of a tired smile on their face. We think that’s pretty special. We think you, our customers who have made this happen, are pretty special too.
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