Local news media carry many reports and comments about the price of milk and how it’s hurting farmers.

With Australian farmers focussed on the big wet across the country’s south, let’s look at the background -- how the dairy market is behaving, and what it means for farmgate prices.

The world economy has veered into difficult and dangerous waters, suggesting 2016 will be a long hard year of slow recovery in prices in global food commodity markets, including dairy.