Canberra Schools' Milk Cut to Affect Tumut Farmers

January 1974 The Canberra Times

Farmers in the Tumut-Gundagai area are likely to suffer large losses because of the Government's decision to stop free school milk supplies.

About a dozen farmers in the area used to supply about 2,500 gallons of milk a week to Inland Dairies Pty Ltd, at Wagga, which sold it to Dairy Farmers Co-operative Ltd for distribution to Canberra schools.

A spokesman for Dairy Farmers Co-operative said in Sydney yesterday that he understood Inland Dairies had told farmers they must suffer the loss of the Dairy Farmers contract.

The spokesman said he thought it should be possible to make an internal adjustment within Inland Dairies which had taken over the row defunct Tumut Co-operative, the original supplier of Canberra's schools milk.

The loss of the school milk contract had meant an annual loss of 2½- million gallons of milk in the farmers' market throughout NSW.

The general manager of Inland Dairies said last night that he was "not interested" in answering questions about the matter.