Unió de Pagesos mobilizes in Gurb to protest the price of milk

BarcelonaSome 30 farmers from Unió de Pagesos (UP) poured milk from different brands at the door of the Pascual plant in Gurb (Osona) this Monday to denounce the new contract offer presented by this company. According to the agricultural union, the offer from the industry, led by Lactalis and followed by the rest of the companies, including Làctia and Pascual, proposes a decrease of between 5 and 6 cents per liter of milk.

"They are paying us between 51 and 53 euro cents per liter, and it will be around 48 cents," explained Jordi Cros, a member of the cattle executive of the agricultural organization. Unió de Pagesos assures that the offer means a 12% drop in farm revenue at a particularly delicate time, marked by an uncertain geopolitical context and by forecasts of increased production costs, especially for essential expenses such as diesel, energy, and livestock feed.

"This cut –adds the union– is unjustified considering that we are in a deficit market for milk, and everything indicates that this deficit will worsen in the coming months. The import of milk at lower prices from other EU countries, especially from France and Portugal, is a situation that the industry itself encourages and that, at the same time, it uses to further squeeze farmers."

The agricultural organization maintains that, "despite the forecast of milk deficit, the recovery of prices will not be immediate, which condemns the producing sector to operate with very low and unsustainable economic levels."

Living from work

UP insists that the sector has dragged along for two decades in which it has only had three profitable years. "This situation makes any medium or long-term planning unviable. Consequently, the number of farms has followed a negative trend that highlights the sector's lack of sustained profitability," it argues. Unió de Pagesos points out that the sector needs stability and balance to be able to guarantee production costs, the investments necessary to improve farms, constant adaptation to regulations, and growing quality demands. For this reason, farmers demand to be able to live from their work, not simply survive.

For its part, the National Federation of Dairy Industries (Fenil), in statements to Efe, has considered that the farmers' protest actions are within their rights, as long as they are not coercive to the normal development of industrial activity. Fenil has stressed that it is important to pay attention to the available official data and information which indicates that there is an excess of milk production as raw material in the EU that demand is unable to absorb, being at record production levels.

The federation also points out that Spanish farmers are currently receiving the highest price for their milk in the entire EU. "This differential in access to raw material causes the expulsion of dairy products made in our country from the shelves and drives the import of raw material and finished dairy products from Northern Europe, as demonstrated by the foreign trade figures published by the State Tax Administration Agency," it emphasizes.