Belgian Farmers Protest Low Milk Prices
The economic downturn has had a negative effect on global agriculture, with prices dropping in all major sectors around the world, and farmers struggling to make ends meet. World milk prices have been on a steady decline for months upon months and are showing no signs of resurgence. Certain countries have taken measures to protect their agriculture sector by providing subsidies to farmers feeling the strains of these tough times.
Belgian farmers, who don’t feel they’ve received enough support from their government, took action last week in a big way. 300 tractors towing liquid manure spreaders showed up at a plowed field in southern Belgium last wednesday. These tankers then dumped their loads, totalling 3 million litres of milk onto the field in protest of low milk prices, saying they would need an increase from 18 euro cents, to 40 euro cents, just to cover costs of production.
Belgian Farmers Protest Low Milk Prices
Belgian farmers are on the right track with this protest. Milk prices are so low in the entire European Union that there is no way a dairy farmer, milking any reasonable number of cows, can survive. This protest brought international attention to the problems these farmers are facing. Governments have to realize that without primary industry, specifically agriculture, their economic standing can only get worse with time. With farmers going bankrupt on a daily basis, countries will have to import more and more from southern countries who have lower costs of production, and end up costing citizens more in the long term, paying to ship products around the world. Something must be done to quell these trends of agriculture being put by the wayside in tough economic times. The only way to do this is to take the protests even further, and stop shipping milk all together, to draw even more international attention to this crisis.
