Dairy farmers stage price protest

Angry dairy farmers today demanded action from European officials amid claims falling milk prices will put thousands of families…

Angry dairy farmers today demanded action from European officials amid claims falling milk prices will put thousands of families out of business.

Thousands of demonstrators marched on Luxembourg with farmers' leader Padraig Walshe warning a price collapse to 1983 levels has thrown the entire industry into crisis.

"Dairy farmers in Ireland are currently selling milk for around seven cent per litre less than it costs them to produce it," Mr Walshe said.

"Prices last seen in 1983, high costs, lack of bank credit and bad weather have created an unprecedented income crisis and unless action is taken, thousands of dairy farm businesses will go broke across Europe.

"The consequences of this income crisis will be felt in businesses and towns and villages across rural Ireland."

Farmers from every county in Ireland, the Irish Farmers' Association and Copa, the European farmers' union, came together for the protest as the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers met.

But motorway roadblocks by French farmers disrupted attempts by several coach-loads of Irish protesters to get into Luxembourg.

Mr Walshe called on EU officials to take tougher action with the big European retailers claiming the price falls farmers' are seeing for milk are not being played out on supermarket shelves.

"With over 90 per cent of the milk produced in Europe sold onto the European market, much of it through the retail trade, we need the EU Commission to address the reasons why, while producer prices have collapsed, consumer prices have not fallen to any significant extent," the IFA chief said.

"We need proper regulation of the massively lucrative retail trade, to ensure producers get a fair price and consumers a fair deal."

Richard Kennedy, leader of the national dairy committee at the Luxembourg protest, warned: "The current crisis will hit the more efficient and more heavily invested dairy farmers first, because they have least room for manoeuvre.

"Unless decisive action to support farmers' incomes is taken urgently, we run the risk of losing some of the very best in the sector, damaging it permanently."

Mr Walshe, who led the protest as head of Copa, said the situation is being replicated right across Europe with some farmers getting half of the production costs.

He also blamed the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers for not doing enough. "The EU cannot wash its hands of the livelihoods of Europe's dairy farm families," Mr Walsh said.

"The dairy industry is one of our most vibrant economic sectors, active in almost every region of the Union, with massive potential, if nurtured, to help in turning around the ailing economies of Europe."

"We need the EU Commission to make far more aggressive use of the market management tools it still has at its disposal, to respond effectively to the current exceptional crisis."