ANGRY dairy farmers from North Yorkshire and the East Riding today added their voices to a campaign calling for a fairer deal on milk.

As pressure groups across the country today threatened to stage pickets at supermarkets and processing plants, local farmers said the action was "entirely justified".

Farmers are outraged that they get only 9p from every 36p pint of milk sold, with the remaining 27p going as profit to the processors and retailers. Most farmers want their share to be drastically increased.

Farmers in the South West were today planning to stage protests at processing plants, saying they would ask delivery lorries not to cross a picket line.

Expressing sympathy with the campaigners today, Kirkbymoorside dairy farmer Graham Bell said: "People just don't understand what we're going through.

"This is happening because we are desperate. If there was a picket going on around here, I would want to be involved.

"I've been on them before, recently at Wisemans and Tesco, near Doncaster. It shows how desperate the times are that we've got to be out at two in the morning making our point."

Responding to the protests, supermarket giant Asda says it has implemented "measures of support" for farmers, by increasing the price of milk on the shelf. Other major supermarket chains, including Sainsbury, Tesco and Safeway, have done the same.

Mr Bell said the move was "a bit of good news", but not enough.

"There's enough money to give us a fair deal, but we don't get one."

Pig farmer John Rowbottom, from Melbourne, near Pocklington, said he sympathised with his dairy farmer colleagues.

"It's becoming more obvious that the agriculture industry needs to act with one voice, because it is in a dreadful state all round.

"There will be a scream of indignation in a few years' time when there is no agriculture industry."

Updated: 11:48 Thursday, September 19, 2002