Her and her husband Brian are Fonterra suppliers and she was vocal at the supplier meeting in Warrnambool on Tuesday.

“April, May, June, July are our good months. They set us up for the rest of the season, but not now (after the price cut announcement),” Ms Singh-Mahil said.

She said they planned to lower calving numbers below 300 this year to cope with Fonterra’s cuts.

“If you are running around like a mad thing on the farm so that you don’t have to spend as much money on staff and you are running yourself into the ground, and you’re not spending time with your kids, then you have to ask yourself the question –  ‘is this worth it?’,” she said.

Ms Singh-Mahil said Fonterra needed to revise its decision.

“They still don’t have to do it the way they are,” she said.

“If they went to their shareholder base in New Zealand and they told them an honest story about how it is impacting their Australian farmer base I believe those people would say ‘go a bit easier’. That’s all that we are asking. We know somewhere along the line that gap has to be filled, but they don’t have to take it out in one big hit. It is unfair and inequitable.”

Ms Mahil-Singh said Fonterra was losing farmer loyalty.

“It is about time businesses put a monetary value on the loyalty and trust that (Fonterra) are squandering by doing this,” she said.

“If they continue on the path they are going now they are going to lose milk.”

She said farmers budgeted for the year from the opening milk price, and to have the goals shifted during the season was unfair.

“In a sense this is a decision by people who have not stood in our shoes. It’s a very thoughtless and short term decision. It is not good business.”