Faced with surging feed costs, more than 2,000 dairy farmers from across the country gathered Thursday in Tokyo's Hibiya Park to tell milk producers they will face a price hike.
In the dairy industry, milk is sold by the kilogram, and the farmers are demanding that milk companies pay at least ¥10 more and pass the cost on to consumers.
"The environment surrounding the dairy business is beyond extremely severe," said Yasunobu Ando, an executive of the Dairy Farmers Political Federation of Japan. "Not only can we not cover our production costs, we can't pay our living expenses, either."