Agriculture ministers meet to devise response to fluctuating milk prices

EUROPEAN agriculture ministers have been attending private meetings in recent weeks to devise new market management measures to reduce the impact which price fluctuations in global milk markets have had on farmers’ incomes, according to Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister Brendan Smith.

There has been a significant shift in thinking on this subject, with the vast majority of EU ministers now agreeing on the need for some form of anti-volatility market intervention. Having pushed for the abolition of the existing milk quotas by 2015, Europe’s ministers now agree that EU food security goals cannot be left at the mercy of unpredictable market prices, Mr Smith told attendees at this week’s Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS) annual conference in Citywest Hotel, Dublin.

Mr Smith said: “When we were arguing the need for anti-volatility measures two years ago, we were getting little or no support from our colleagues in Europe. Now the Council of Ministers are all in support of the need to put market control measures in place to ensure stability in farm incomes.