FOREST farmer Brian Baker is urging fellow dairy farmers to join a French-style 'milk blockade' to stop increasing numbers being driven to the wall by low prices.
Mr Baker, who runs a herd of 120-130 milkers at Close Turf Farm, St Briavels, says the aim is to create a mass shortage of high quality milk this winter.
The member of Farmers For Action says the local industry has never been in such poor shape.
"I have just counted the number of dairy farms between here and Chepstow and where there used to be 10 a few years ago we are now down to three," he told the Review.
"The other way to Bream is worse – there used to be six, and now there is only one."
The final straw has been 'greedy' milk processors who are putting up prices without passing the benefits on to farmers.
"We don't want Government handouts, subsidies or anything like that – we just want 5p a gallon, a fair price. At the moment the price we are getting is 5-6p below the cost of production," he said.
Farmers For Action, the group behind recent fuel protests who helped lorry drivers blockade petrol depots and organise road go-slows, says it wants to see the supermarkets run dry.
"We now feel the time is right to make British milk go into short supply and let us see what the shareholders make of their precious investments when they have no liquid milk going through their processing plants," the group says.
"Forget the NFU – these people are far too close to our enemy, the profit-makers. We are here to stay, an upstanding organisation to be reckoned with for the benefit of future generations who want to farm on this great island of ours."
Mr Baker, who said he knew 50-60 Gloucestershire farmers had joined the movement, said the Prime Minister had to wake up to the fact that the rural community and economy was suffering badly, yet it was in the same country as London.
"All we are asking for is a sustainable living."