THOUSANDS OF dairy farmers have taken to the streets to demand a reversal of Glanbia’s decision to cut the price it pays its farmer suppliers for milk.
More than 2,000 farmers and their families attended protest meetings in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, on Tuesday night and at the Glanbia headquarters in Kilkenny yesterday.
Glanbia, Ireland’s largest milk processor and the second-largest cheddar cheese producer in the US, has cut the price it pays to farmers to 20 cent a litre for milk which was delivered last month.
Addressing protesters at the company headquarters, the chairman of the Irish Farmers Association’s dairy committee, Richard Kennedy, said this was the lowest milk price being paid in the country and 7 cent lower than break-even production cost.
“Glanbia is the largest, most efficient milk processor in the country, with a high value-added product mix, the benefit of large scale and international businesses which make a significant contribution to profits,” Mr Kennedy said.
“The company cannot credibly justify a price of 20 cents when other smaller co-ops, some reliant on commodity products alone, are paying up to three cents a litre more for March, 2009.
“At 20 cents a litre, milk producers are at a loss of seven cents a litre. This means that this year, the average milk supplier will be €18,000 in the red.
“This is intolerable and unsustainable. The most efficient producers would need 27 cents a litre to cover their bare costs of production, to face financial repayments and meet day-to-day family expenses,” Mr Kennedy said.
“Suppliers are rightly furious. Glanbia must remember that if viable incomes cannot be made from milk production, the very existence of Glanbia, primarily a milk-processing company, will come under threat,” he said.
As more protest meetings are planned by Irish Farmers Association for later today in Portlaoise, Co Laois, and Wexford, Glanbia said it expected world dairy markets to remain weak and somewhat volatile.
The price farmers received for their milk was linked to world prices and prices being received by processors from the markets were also untenable.