IRISH DAIRY farmers should receive payments of about €600 each and about €11 million in total under an agreement worked out yesterday.
The European Commission is prepared to make an extra €280 million available from the EU’s 2010 agricultural budget to dairy farmers in difficulty. Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith welcomed the decision: “I hope that markets will return and farmers will be getting a proper return for their product.”
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) estimates producers could pocket €500 to €600 each from the fund, but IFA president Pádraig Walshe, while welcoming the news, played down its benefits. “All farmers are suffering huge losses on their income this year,” he told The Irish Times. “Farmers would much prefer to get the money from the marketplace.”
Jackie Cahill, president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Organisation, said the deal would only serve to “throw diesel on the fire” and would not quell the spate of protests. “While we won’t refuse any money, it is so inadequate. It shows the European Commission is out of touch with the reality that’s out there at the moment.” He added, “The decision will increase farmers’ anger.”
The EU’s farm chief Mariann Fischer Boel made the commitment at a meeting in Luxembourg under diplomatic pressure from 21 of the bloc’s 27 states. The states wrote to the commission last week demanding a payout of €300 million for crisis-hit farmers.
She said her offer was as close as she could get to member states’ demands without going over budget next year.
“Member states have been plucking off my last feather,” she said.
Meanwhile, angry milk producers gathered outside the meeting to beg compensation for plummeting prices at the farm gate. Estimates said the demonstrators numbered about 2,000.
The farmers threw eggs and stationed their tractors at the entrance to the building where EU ministers were meeting, cutting off access to the entire EU district.
Milk prices have dropped by half compared to a 2007 high, but the commission says the market is beginning to pick up and intends to stick to its plan to phase out milk subsidies by 2015. It also says prices for butter and skimmed milk powder are well above the intervention level where the EU would absorb overstock to maintain prices.
The aid package should reach farmers by the beginning of next year, after getting approval from the European Parliament and EU finance ministers, who will meet in mid-November.