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| Italy imports most of its fresh milk |
‘ What if each day you
have to bring some money to your job to be able to work. Would you do that? I
don’t think so.’
This quote was taken from a Austrian milk farmer at a recent
conference on the CAPreform 2020 in the European Parliament in Brussels. To see a sober farmer fight for his tears when he explains that he advised his
son to break his family tradition and to find another job than that of a dairy farmer,
you know something serious is going on.
The CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) has mainly lead to milk
surpluses and thus low prices for the European farmers. Subsidies guaranteed
minimum prices for the produced milk which encouraged many dairy farmers to
produce as much as possible. These surpluses have later been dumped in 3rd world
countries as milk powder and incredible low income for the farmers.
Although the CAP has gone through different smaller and
bigger reforms - which alluded to the negative effects of earlier policies - the
situation for the dairy farmers still not seems to be very hopeful. Big dairy
farmers are under contract of large companies which control their income: When
a farmer doesn’t agree on the price per liter milk, the company easily decides
to move to another farmer.
While most supermarkets offer fair produce form far away
countries, we should consider how fair our ‘own’ farmers can farm. We (Western
consumers) tend to shop as cheap as possible thereby forgetting what it did
cost to produce our food.
In Germany they have set-up Die faire Milch company which gives farmers a good price for their milk and ensures high
quality milk produced by cows which were not feed on genetic soya. In Italy Granarolo brings the consumers fresh milk from their own region to the nearest
supermarket. And recently a Dutch based worldwide company decided to give a price
for organic milk which is independent for the price of bio-industry produced
milk.
So things seem to go in the right direction. But – once again
– things cannot be realized by one part of the chain. Farmers need to be friendly
to the planet thereby delivering high quality produce. Retailers should look
for local produce and pay the producer a fair price. And consumers should not
forget what effort it did take to produce their food. Don’t just buy the
cheapest product on offer.
Pay a fair price as you like to be paid fair as well!
