Farmer fears as milk could soon cost the same as fuel

PALMA
THE Farmers Union has demanded “the creation of an observatory of prices to avoid speculation in situations such as the one in process now, where there is an upward trend in the price of basic foodstuffs”.

This was announced by their spokesperson, Joan Mas, who added “for some time we have been warning about price rises in certain basic products, such as milk products due to the increase in animal feed. Milk will soon cost the same as petrol, one euro per litre. “All this is due to economic globalisation, with effects at world level, but it is necessary to be watchful so that there will be no speculation to take advantage of the existing trend. “To do this, it would be very useful if an observatory of product prices were to be set up by the Government to control the evolution of the price from the farm to the consumer. “The fact that basic foodstuffs such as milk products, eggs, flour, bread and chicken are going to have considerable increases in price is a very delicate matter. We need to avoid combining the two factors: globalisation and speculation”.

Joan Mas wanted to make it clear that the idea that it is the producer who gains from these price increases is false. “We do not gain at all. If the farmer raises his prices it is because he has higher production costs. And it appears to us that if the farmer increases his prices by a certain percentage, by the time the product goes on sale to the consumer that percentage has become much greater”.

For his part, Biel Company, President of Asaja Balears, said he considered that “it will be difficult to bring prices down in the short term, it remains to be seen how the production and consumption evolves. In any case, there is little benefit for the producer. In the case of the farmers, production costs have multiplied and the price rises in the markets scarcely compensate them for this”. Company is worried that this situation will cause some farmers to go out of business. “It would not surprise me if some older farmers who are thinking of retiring retire before the time they initially anticipated. As for the consumer, he has no alternative but to accept it because we have to remember that we are talking about basic foodstuffs which it is difficult to do without. If we then add the mortgage effect to all of this, the situation is delicate”. As Mas said, the Farmers Union have been warning for weeks that prices of milk and its derivatives are rising, although the Majorcan farmer is not receiving the same sort of prices for his product.