People power backs 4Real Milk documentary on 'epic risk' to farming future

FARMER GREGIE – Queensland Scenic Rim dairy farmer Greg Dennis, who took on the mightiest forces in the fresh milk market – is crowd funding a documentary production about his own epic battle and the Australian fresh food market’s future.

Mr Dennis made headlines when he bucked the ‘establishment’ – including international dairy products conglomerate Parmalat, who sparked retaliation when it offered him 25 percent less than the Dennis farm’s cost of production – and went it alone. 

‘Farmer Gregie’ came under enormous financial and market pressure when he opted to borrow more than $1 million for the latest robotic dairy production systems, to bring his costs down, and then started marketing his own fresh milk to South East Queensland under his brand, 4Real Milk.

He is not only still going, he is still growing on the back of a groundswell of public support from people who are prepared to support their local milk industry, even at prices well above the major supermarkets’ dollar-a-litre baseline.

Mr Dennis admitted his goal was simple and it became the foundation for his brand: “Provide the freshest, highest quality farm gate fresh milk, with no additives, for everyone; and pay the farmers a sustainable farmgate price for their milk”.

The Dennis family’s fight to not only regain their farm but to reclaim and maintain a viable milk production market is a true David-versus-Goliath story. If he could not make his dairy business work, Mr Dennis, a fourth generation farmer, would not only have lost his 80-year-old family farm, he would have lost his family home as well.

“It was a matter of we either closed down and went bust or we had a go, which we did,” Mr Dennis said.

Mr Dennis has been telling his story to business groups and supporters around Australia, but he believes a professional documentary – covering the precarious situation he and other dairy farmers have found themselves in –highlighting what has to be done to allow the Australian dairy market to thrive, is essential. 

With his funds tight and committed to his business, Mr Dennis has turned to crowd funding through the GoFundMe.com site to support the documentary’s production.

“Our documentary will help to create awareness and educate people of the plight of agriculture today…and their food security tomorrow,” Mr Dennis said.

“It may at times be confrontational, as we expose some of the unsustainable price fixing and retail bullying, and downright illegal activity – which inevitably flows on to the bottom rung of the ladder – the farmer.

“I am solution driven, and just as I will aim to find big picture solutions for agriculture and the dairy industry – I will find a way to keep moving the documentary forward,” he said.

“The story is too important to go ‘untold’. People deserve to know the truth about their rapidly diminishing fresh food supply.”

https://www.gofundme.com/drp3sgkc

https://soundcloud.com/abc-southern-qld/scenic-rim-dairy-farmer-takes-concerns-to-canberra

https://soundcloud.com/abc-queensland/milk-war

 

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