A MAJOR farming crisis appears to have been averted with the lifting of the blockades yesterday.

With the breaking up of the protests the threat that tankers operated by Zenith - the North's major milk buyer - running out of fuel by Monday, Septemebr 18, was partially lifted although the possibility still exists.

If that happens then dairy farmers in South Lakeland would be looking at ways of disposing of thousands of gallons of milk going sour in silos.

"If our customers (processors of liquid milk) are unable to accept the milk that we have collected from the farms because they have no plastic bottles or cartons, then we are not able to make any more collections because we have nowhere to put it," said Zenith marketing manager Jane Childsworth.

"Like everybody we are hoping that once the fuel starts leaving the refineries and gets itself running round the system, it will avert a major problem."

NFU dairy spokesman for Cumbria, Matt Robinson, of Holmescales Farm, near Endmoor, said that if farmers had been forced to throw away good milk it could have been "the last nail in the coffin" for many of them.

Farmers have been at the forefront of some of the national protests although the North West branch of the NFU took no part in, or orchestrated, any of the demonstrations.

On Wednesday, Richard Wilson, of High House Farm, Helsington, took his tractor along to Kendal to support the taxi drivers' protest.

"Things have got out of hand.

Fuel costs are crippling us," he said.

"Red diesel is now more expensive than the milk we produce.

Last summer farmers were paying nine or ten pence a litre for red diesel, now its 25 or 26 pence.

"But it's not just farmers' fuel, it is all the haulage as well, from the feed that comes in to the milk that goes out.

It all comes back to us and we are not getting a fair price."

Yesterday the NFU said the momentum to achieve a cut in the "extortionate" road fuel taxes must be maintained in the coming weeks.

NFU President Ben Gill said he would be seeking an immediate meeting with the Agriculture Minister Nick Brown about fuel tax and the immediate need to get fuel out to farmers and growers whose businesses have ground to a halt.