Milk farmers step up direct action across Europe
Dairy farmers, bludgeoned by low milk prices, dumped some 3 million litres of milk onto Belgian fields on Wednesday (16 February), in a desperate attempt to convince European politicians to come to their aid.
Using manure trucks, around 300 farmers covered fields near the town of Ciney with the equivalent of a day's production in southern Belgium.
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Following a peak in milk prices in mid-2008, world markets have seen a sharp decline. A recent drop of some 40 percent has pushed milk prices to 1992 levels. The move will have robbed European dairy producers of some €10 billion by the end of the year, according to Copa and Cogeca, the European farmers' associations.
A litre of milk currently costs 40 cents to produce, but farmers cannot sell for more than 20 cents, with the trade associations warning this will push thousands of their members into bankruptcy if robust action is not taken soon.
The farmers want the EU to abandon plans to scrap milk quotas and are demanding the creation of a new European agency to orchestrate supply and demand for milk.
"The politicians must act at once to defuse the situation," said the president of the European Milk Board, Romuald Schaber. "The striking dairy farmers demand that the politicians tackle the core problem and implement an immediate reduction in the volume of milk to enable dairies to pay cost-covering milk prices as quickly as possible."
The collapse in prices dominated discussion among EU farm ministers for much of the last year.
In July, the European Commission recommended a range of measures such as government aid, funds channelled through the EU's rural development programme and actions to reduce what it calls "anti-competitive" practices across the food sector.
The commission did not back plans to gradually reduce milk quotas by one percent a year and eliminate them altogether in 2015, however.
Wider impact
The angry farmers are also concerned that European policies are damaging producers in the third world.
"This milk policy is also ruining milk producers in developing countries," said Erwin Schopges of the Belgian Milk Producer Lobby (MIG). "The re-introduction of the antiquated mechanism of export subsidies early in the year means that European milk is being sold at artificially cheap prices on the world market, destroying local markets in poor countries."
La Via Campesina, the global peasants' organisation said that EU dairy policies damage the environment as well.
"With just a few months until the climate conference in Copenhagen, the EU can no longer defend an intensive model of dairy production based on imported soy from Latin America, processed into a surplus of butter and dried milk," the group said in a statement.
"This dependence not only makes the EU vulnerable on strategic level, but it also goes hand in hand with environmental and social damage in Latin America as much as in Europe."
Actions similar to those in Belgium are taking place across Europe, with farmers in Luxembourg releasing 50,000 litres on their fields the day before. Farmers, particularly in the Netherlands, are also handing out milk to the public in an attempt to boost popular support.
More than forty thousand farmers in eight countries have stopped supplying milk. Producers in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have blocked lorries from accessing distribution and storage facilities.
In some regions of France, around 50 percent of the farmers are participating in the milk strike, and in Switzerland - which is not in the EU - all farmers have joined the strike, according to the EMB.