EU farm ministers urged to address ‘severe crisis’ in dairy sector

EUROPEAN agriculture ministers were urged yesterday to take further urgent action to address the severe market crisis in the dairy sector.

Padraig Walshe, president of COPA, the European farmers union, made the plea at an informal meeting of the EU Agricultural Council in Brno, Czech Republic.

He said the European dairy sector is experiencing an extraordinary market crisis. The only way to solve it is to fully use the market management instruments, which the commission has at its disposal.

“It is important, for example, that intervention purchases of butter and skimmed milk powder (SMP) are maintained, but the current situation is so severe that more must be done,” he said.

Mr Walshe, the current Irish Farmers Association president, said the single most important step the commission and council could take at the moment would be to grant financial support to use SMP in animal feed.

“According to our calculations, up to an additional 150,000 tonnes of SMP could then be used, greatly reducing the pressure on the dairy markets,” he said.

Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said they could all agree that post-2013 the role and contribution of direct payments for income support to farmers should be different than what it is today. “By that time, more than 90% of payments will be decoupled, and the transition of the new member states toward an EU wide scheme should be finalised. We also hope the economic crisis will be over and pressures on farm prices will hopefully be reduced.

Fischer Boel said the direct payment scheme, as a means of safety-net income support, has played a very useful role in allowing the transition towards a more market oriented CAP.

”For this reason I believe that some form of basic income safety-net will be needed, especially if we want to avoid more costly, and more distorting, forms of income support.

Fischer Boel said that based on the experience so far in direct payments in the EU she is convinced that the CAP in the future should go on keeping a common system of direct payment which provides an income safety-net for farmers.