Photo: Facebook | European Milk Board
Parading fake cows painted in the colours of the European flag, the protesters congregated outside the headquarters of the European Parliament and the European Commission on Monday, 27 May.
In an interview with Euronews, Kjartan Poulsen, president of the European Milk Board, said the protesters wanted “an EU-wide version of a Spanish law on ‘unfair commercial practices’, which forbids selling ‘products below cost at all stages of the purchasing chain”.
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Although Poulsen said production costs varied from country to country, generally speaking, it was costing farmers more to produce milk than what it was costing consumers to buy it.
According to the president of the Po Valley Milk Producers’ Association, Roberto Cavaliere, in some countries, such as Italy, the gap between production costs and selling prices was even greater than the European average, Euronews reported.
“On average, the costs of an Italian company are around 60c/ℓ to 65c/ℓ. Currently, Italian producers earn 50c/ℓ. We still have a gap of 15c. We ask for a fair price because the prices paid to producers over the last 25 years have never covered production costs,” Cavaliere said.
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The only producers in the sector that could survive what he called “an unbalanced and unprofitable market”, were those using “family labour, which cuts production costs because they do not pay for their work. Others simply close,” he added.
“In 1997 there were 110 000 milk producers in Italy, and in 2023 there were 18 000. Almost 90 000 companies have closed. These are alarming figures,” Cavaliere said.
The farmers’ demands include ‘anti-crisis tools’ for the agriculture sector, and creating organisations in which producers from different dairy supply chains were represented.
In addition, they want clauses added to the EU’s environmental requirements to ensure milk imported into the bloc also adheres to the same stringent requirements demanded from EU farmers.
Furthermore, these farmers want to be more involved in the drafting of measures that affect the agriculture sector in Europe.
However, compared with recent farmer protests, Monday’s demonstration was less focused on the Green Deal, although Cavaliere did call for the Farm to Fork programme, the branch of the Green Deal dedicated to the agriculture sector, to be scrapped.
Despite dairy farmers believing they had “an open dialogue” with European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, they want to increase pressure ahead of the European elections to be held from 6 to 9 June, Euronews reported.
