Government intermediation fails to raise milk prices to farmers

• The supply crisis suffocates the Spanish countryside: "If the primary sector falls, the country will fall"

"I am disappointed," confessed the head of the dairy sector in Asaja,

. "Each of the parties takes home duties. The situation is extremely difficult, four or five farms continue to close every day and the solution is not seen," stated

, UPA's Secretary of Livestock. "The solution is difficult because the industry does not want to make addenda to the contracts to update them," denounced the head of COAG's dairy cow,

.

They are the testimonies of those responsible for the farmers at the end of the

that for the first time since the beginning of this price crisis met yesterday at the Ministry of Industry with the participation of all the parties involved to try to bring positions closer. None of that happened. Industry and distribution continued to place responsibility on each other while farmers are forced to close their farms each day, a situation aggravated by the

Eleven months after the situation began to turn critical, the Secretary General of Agriculture and Food,

, summoned the parties to at least sit together.

But for now, it has been useless.

"The call has come late," Santalla complained, although the Ministry indicates that they have been working in parallel these months with each of the parties.

At that time, five beef farms were closed every day in Spain, according to agricultural organizations, which since January put more than 150 million euros, at a rate of 15 million per month, according to a study prepared by UPA.

"Become aware"

At the meeting, the Secretary General of Agriculture and Food, Fernando Miranda, urged the dairy industry and distribution to ensure that the contracts already signed before the runaway cost of inputs

be retouched and become "flexible" to give a momentary relief to ranchers. "There are still too many contracts at fixed prices and, therefore, they are not able to reflect the circumstances we have now," said Miranda, who called on the industry and distribution to "become aware" of the situation and adopt "the best way to solve the problem".

But in an hour and a half that the meeting lasted there were "too many reproaches between the representatives of the industry and the distribution but no concrete solution", laments the representative of Asaja, who remembers that milk producers are receiving 0.32 euros on average per liter of milk when production costs (and more in recent times) are 0.40.

This is a clear sale at a loss expressly prohibited by the renewed -last year- Food Chain Law that now wants to be modified again a year after its approval, and which is already in the Senate.

However, the general director of the National Federation of Dairy Industries (Fenil),

, explained that touching up contracts would affect industrial competitiveness.

Taking into account that the industry is also affected by the legal impossibility of agreeing on prices (in fact there is a sentence with millionaire costs -80.6 million- on this type of practices that supposedly occurred between 2000 and 2013), Calabozo asserted that the contracts can be modified but "only" to correct "upwards" the prices to be settled after the deliveries of the production, the volume or the duration of the contracts, but nothing more. So he clarified that "no one guarantees that in the one-year cycle costs will fall again." They are "rigidities" that "give a long-term contract" with its "pros and cons," he added.

For his part,

technical secretary general of

, the employer's association for the supermarket sector, said that this price crisis is "different" from those that occurred in previous years because "it is not exclusive" to the dairy sector, to which he added that the search for solutions, therefore, "is very complicated in a context in addition to emerging from a pandemic."

In addition, he stressed that the best position to find solutions is in the industry "because there are hardly five or six that supply milk" compared to "more than 100 supermarket chains that Asedas represents."

In the hands of the industry

This head-on clash between industry and distribution shows, for farmers, "that there is no will" on the part of the parties to find an agreement and, unfortunately, "we are in their hands," emphasizes the representative of Asaja, who foresees a relative rise in barely a penny per liter for farmers,

that may occur in the coming weeks "to cover our mouths", but with that "nothing" would be solved.

"They are wrong if they want us to settle for it."

In the same vein, the UPA leader said, who believes that "some industries", especially the French, with great potential in the Spanish market, "want to keep all the business while the farmers" are not asking to get rich without to continue living".

The table positively valued that the distribution, in general lines, has increased the sales prices on the consumer shelves of supermarkets, around "three cents", although they consider it "insufficient" if, in addition, this rise has not had an impact on the producers.

The members of this dairy table have been summoned to meet in December with the aim of monitoring the situation while the agrarian organizations, all united, continue to maintain the calendar of mobilizations already set weeks ago.

In fact, this Thursday a concentration is planned in front of the Lactalis Puleva headquarters in Granada.

In addition, they also consider calling on consumers to boycott certain brands of milk.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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