EU co-op body seeks action to ease pressure on milk producers
It has written to Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Dacian Ciolos and the EU member states urging them to make use of the growing market opportunities in the last year of milk quotas.
Copa Cogeca is demanding that money from the milk super-levy also needs to be kept in the sector to help it develop further.
“In addition, we need to discuss how to deal with the potential increase in price volatility when milk quotas expire in 2015,” it said.
Chairman of Copa-Cogeca Working Party on Milk and Dairy Products, Mansel Raymond, said demand for dairy products is on the rise.
This is especially the case in the developing world and the emerging economies like China and India, where OECD-FAO predicts dairy consumption to rise by around 30% by 2021.
“Dairy producers are trying to respond to this increased world demand but they are being penalised. Dairy farms are barely recovering their cash flow from the last severe price drop.
“Copa-Cogeca, consequently, calls for the milk super-levy collected for 2014/2015 to go back to the sector,” he said.
