Brussels, 13/12/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 12 December, the European Commission published a document on the conference on the future of the European dairy industry that was held in Brussels on 24 September. The suggestions mooted at the event will be assessed in a report to be published in June 2014.
The Commission says the various stakeholders broadly agreed on the need for transparency so that trends can be detected early and market signals relayed without delay. The Commission says that the creation of a dairy market monitoring centre, as announced by Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos at the start of the conference, will help the industry beyond 2015, when milk quotas are phased out.
The Commission says that a number of ideas put forward at the conference on regulating milk prices and income are worth examining, such as giving dairy farmer organisations greater powers, boosting safety nets, freezing or reducing milk production in times of crisis and introducing counter-cyclical farm support mechanisms. The suggestions will be assessed in a report on the dairy industry and the milk supply chain to be published in June 2014 that will focus on preserving dairy farming in vulnerable regions. (LC/transl.fl)