FARMERS PROTESTED at low milk prices in Brussels and Dublin yesterday. They were seeking more EU support for the dairy industry as the Council of Agriculture Ministers met in Brussels to discuss what is now seen as a crisis.
Ireland and some other states have been seeking more market supports for the industry which has been crippled by low prices caused by over-supply and dropping world demand.
Members of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) joined about 800 farmers from France and Germany demonstrating outside the European Commission in Brussels yesterday morning.
Among the farm leaders who addressed them was Jackie Cahill, president of the ICMSA.
Mr Cahill said the crisis around the collapse in dairy farmer incomes was completely the making of the EU Commission and Farm Council and they alone had responsibility to correct it.
He said nothing short of a complete U-turn by the commission to support prices would save dairy farmers from bankruptcy and the infliction of irreparable damage to Ireland and Europe’s dairy and agri-processing sectors.
He described the measures taken by the commission to date as the equivalent of “sticking a plaster on a gaping wound”. He said milk prices continued to remain substantially below the cost of production.
Earlier over 30 dairy farmers from the Irish Farmers Association’s (IFA) national dairy committee held a protest in the lobby of the EU Commission Offices in Dublin.
Carrying banners asking if they had to dump their milk before the commission and the Government would react to their plight, the protest lasted 45 minutes.
Richard Kennedy, chairman of the dairy group, said dairy farmers could not survive on the prices they were now being paid which were the same as they were getting 26 years ago.
“We are getting 20 cents per litre and are now producing milk for no money at all. We need at least 27c/litre just to be viable.”
Mr Kennedy blamed the EU for creating the problem by removing itself from world markets through the policies it pursued over recent years and by cutting the supports which were vital to the sector.
“Europe has left the market clear, and handed over our business to the UK and New Zealand. We have to get it back and be able to move the small surplus we have in Europe on to the world market with increased export refunds.”
He and Derek Deane, deputy president of the IFA, urged Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith to join with like-minded colleagues from other countries to bring about needed changes.
Mary Sherry of the IFA’s farm family committee said families were frantic with worry about how they were going to feed, clothe and educate their children as they now had no income.