MEDIA RELEASE 11/08/2016
Aussie Helpers have been assisting farming families for fifteen years and it is not often that we ask for specific assistance however with the soul destroying milk price crisis in Victoria and the same in Tasmania plus flood damage to farms we urgently need to ask for public assistance for our Dairy Farmers to enable these families to survive what has been inflicted upon them by Murray Goulburn and Fonterra milk processors in recent weeks.
Aussie Helpers volunteers have been the first on the scene in Victoria and followed up closely by placing volunteers in Tasmania. The Aussie Helpers Board has approved the sum of $200,000 for assistance in Victoria and $250,000 for assistance in Tasmania and we know already that these amounts will be insufficient due to the terrible state of the Dairy farming families caused by this massive milk price drop. The current milk price only gives these Dairy Farmers 26/29c per litre when productions costs are around 38/40c per litre.
One does not have to be an economist to work out the ramifications that this situation is causing our Dairy Farmers, financial stress, psychological stress, family anxiety to mention a few. This crisis was inflicted upon these farming families after being told by the above companies to increase their herds to increase their volume of milk and unfortunately many Dairy Farmers went into debt to do what was asked and now have increased debts for new cows and stock feed for no avail.
On top of the ridiculously low milk price these Dairy Farmers have now been virtually swamped with continuous rainfall over the past six or seven weeks making farms an absolute quagmire with stock unable to use waterlogged paddocks and farmers having to resort to hand feeding. This of course is nigh impossible due to the lack of income from their milk and Aussie Helpers to date have assisted Dairy farmers in Victoria with more than one thousand round 4×4 bales of hay delivered by Aussie Helpers to the farms in need and in Tasmania some seven hundred bales of silage
Our work in Victoria and Tasmania has so far involved more than two hundred and fifty Dairy farmers with each family being given a personal visit from an Aussie Helpers and gifted with a box of groceries and a pamper pack for ladies together with $300/$400 of vouchers for food and fuel plus Aussie Helpers are assisting families suffering anxiety with professional psychological counselling at our cost.
To date there is no other organisation on the ground doing what is needed, visiting these famers and finding out what assistance they need and this is a very costly exercise and there is unfortunately no assistance from any government for what we do (we have asked the Federal, Victorian and Tasmanian governments for help to no avail)
Aussie Helpers is seeking assistance from businesses and the public to help keep these Dairy Farmers on their farms. This is a matter of utmost urgency.
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Contact Brian Egan 1300 665232