Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on developing a futures market for UK dairy farmers.

George Eustice

Analysis recently completed by Defra, working with HM Treasury and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), has identified that futures markets have a role to play in tackling price risks, improving price transparency and encouraging the development of longer-term contracts across the supply chain. We are now working closely with AHDB’s Volatility Forum to see how this work can be taken forward, although it would be for the financial exchanges to come up with a specific proposition. It is encouraging that some UK dairies are already offering their farmers opportunities to trade on futures markets