Brussels, 08/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 7 May, the agricultural organisations of the EU (COPA-COGECA) wrote to Commissioner Dacian Ciolos and the member states, calling on the European Commission to act to “alleviate pressure on EU milk producers for the last milk quota year and enable them to make use of the growing market opportunities”.
The agricultural organisations argue that the money raised by the super-levies for 2014-2015 (fines in the event of exceeding milk quotas) should be fed back into the dairy sector to help it to develop. COPA-COGECA also supports a change to the fat correction coefficient (effectively amounting to an increase in quotas), which certain countries have called for, whilst others oppose.
COPA-COGECA also calls for a discussion on how to deal with the potential increase in price volatility when milk quotas expire in 2015. The letter was drafted in anticipation of the publication this June of the European Commission's report on the milk and dairy products market (see EUROPE 11073).
Mansel Raymond, chair of COPA-COGECA's milk and dairy products working group, pointed out that demand for dairy products is on the increase, particularly in the developing countries and emerging economies such as China and India, “where OECD-FAO predicts dairy consumption to rise by around 30% by 2021”. He stressed that dairy producers need to be in a good position in order to make the most of these opportunities and to have confidence in the future. They are “trying to respond to this increased world demand but they are being penalised”, Raymond argued. Dairy farms are barely recovering their cash flow from the last severe price drop, he added. (LC)