This week, supermarket heavyweights Aldi and Coles finally bowed to mounting pressure from consumers, politicians and dairy farmers to remove $1 milk from their fridges. The move follows Woolworths’ lead last month, and is an attempt to make Australia’s dairy industry more sustainable after almost a decade of ‘milk gate’, where heavily discounted milk has hurt, and in some cases destroyed, dairy farmers.

“Our dairy farmers are not a charity,” said David Littleproud MP, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, on stage at the annual Global Food Forum presented by The Australian newspaper earlier this week in Sydney.

Following Woolworths move to increase the price of milk in February, Littleproud has been applying pressure to the other supermarkets to do the same. “Woolworths is getting rid of $1 milk. It’s time Coles and Aldi got behind dairy farmers and did the same,” he tweeted on February 18 from Canberra.

So, with dirt-cheap supermarket-brand milk now down the drain, what does this look like for shoppers? In two words: not much. The cost of Aldi’s Farmdale Fresh milk range will increase by only 10 cents a litre, and at Coles, the price of their Coles Brand milk will jump by the same amount to $2.20 for 2L and $3.30 for 3L. The delayed move echoes Woolworths’ decision last month to bump up the price of its own-brand milk by 10 cents a litre, and all three supermarkets vow the price increases will be passed directly to farmers.

“We know many dairy farmers cannot wait for structural reform to be delivered, so we are moving to provide relief right now,” said Coles CEO Steven Cain directly after the announcement.

Farmers face battles on two fronts with the plummeting cost of food coupled with the record-breaking drought across Queensland, NSW and northern Victoria, and business leaders echo the need to protect and support them while structural reform is slow to take effect. “If we don’t have a strong supply at the farmgate, we don’t have a business,” said Sir Rod Eddington, Non Executive Chairman at Lion, which is one of Australasia’s largest food and beverage companies.

Fourth generation Tuncester dairy farmer Paul Weir said he hopes supermarket milk price hikes are a temporary solution before more is done to help struggling farmers and to help get the dairy industry back on its feet.

“We’re in one of the worst droughts in history, milk’s dropping down to one of the lowest records in a long time, everyone around here is doing it tough, and feed costs have gone through the roof,” Weir told the ABC last month when Coles refused to raise the price of milk at the same time as its rival. “The fundamental problem is that it’s well under the cost of production, and if this industry is going to be sustainable we need a price rise across the whole dairy cabinet –milk, cheese, yoghurts, butter, the whole lot.”