Brussels, 01/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - The latest results of the study on the cost of dairy production carried out by the Büro für Agrarsoziologie & Landwirtschaft (BAL) show that production costs for milk in Germany stood at 49.95 euro cents/kg in April 2014 (price of milk with 4.0% fat and 3.4% protein). However, the price paid to producers has fallen to 40.60 cents.
“This leaves producers with a shortfall in their production costs of more than five cents”, said the European Milk Board (EMB) in a press release published on Monday 1 September. In January 2014, the cost was 45.16 cents/kilogram and production prices 41.46 cents per kilogram of milk.
The study also flags up varying production costs between the regions. The cost of dairy production in southern Germany (Saarland, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse) is 51.06 cents/kg. In the East region (Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), the figure is 43.52 cents/kg, according to the study. In the North (North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein), production costs were 40.95 cents per kilogram of milk in April. The price-cost ratio for Germany shows that, on average, there was a production cost coverage of just 88%, in other words a deficit of 12%.
According to EMB President Romuald Schaber, the growing gap between cost of production and price of milk is not a short-term phenomenon: “Producers have been facing this difficult situation already for a long time. And unfortunately we expect it to exacerbate even further”. (LC)