The leaders of the dairy branch of the Victorian Farmers Federation have resigned and launched a new organization called Dairy Farmers of Victoria.
They hope to soon enlist 1,000 members.
Their leader is Mark Billing, who resigned as president of Victorian Farmers Federation.
It comes after months of internal and external turmoil for the VFF and its president Emma Germano, who is also facing a revolt from Grains Group members.
Billing said the VFF had not been delivering dairy farmers value for their membership dollars, which are paid at a rate of $800 (about $700 Canadian) per million litres of milk produced.
“This has been a long time coming; we’ve been trying to talk to VFF over a long period of time but unfortunately the VFF leadership has made a decision not to sit down and talk to us and look at a way forward,” he said.
“There is a lack of dairy farmer levy money coming back to the commodity to do policy development and advocacy.
