THE dairy industry is on its knees. Having been around retail, wholesale, contract packing and logistics all my life, the destruction of the agricultural industry seems deliberate.

I can tell any hard working impoverished dairy farmer it is nothing to do with global markets. It is everything to do with the dominance of the big-four supermarkets.

Current prices of semi-skimmed milk at a major supermarket are: six pints for £1.38 – 38.1p per litre; four pints are 89p – 39.2p pltr; two pints are 75p – 66p pltr; and one pint is 45p – 79p a litre.

This beggars belief: I have paid much more for bottled water.

Ukip will reintroduce a Milk Marketing Board-type organisation, to be run by the National Farmers’ Union.

This country no longer has the ability to fulfil its milk quota. The European Union Common Agricultural Policy has failed this country. When Margaret Thatcher abolished the board, she could never have envisaged the powerful commodities market or supermarkets.

That does not excuse today’s Parliamentarians ignoring the nation’s seriously declining dairy herd.

Paul Abbott, Ukip branch secretary, Prospective Parliamentary candidate for York Outer.