Letter From Europe

Politicians – and farmers – say it’s time to say goodbye to cheap food policies in Europe. But consumers still continue to seek low prices – and the biggest supermarket chains are making sure they get them

by NORMAN DUNN

The era of cheap food in Europe is over. That was an announcement from the European Parliament in 2009. Trouble is, no one has told the union’s 500 million consumers.   
Let’s take milk as an example. Supermarkets almost everywhere looked like they were responding to pressure from farmers for more money. They added around 10 per cent to retail milk prices in mid-2009. But the real reason was a shortage of milk in the summer.

Milk yields and production efficiency put this country’s dairy sector right up amongst the world elite. But high investment and low returns mean business risk is sky-high, too


by NORMAN DUNN

You could say that the majority of our dairy farmers have financial problems at the moment,” admits Gitte Grønbaek.

The world’s largest farm equipment exhibition launches a diesel-electric tractor. Other electrical innovations offer continuous crop-related adjustment of combining and silage harvesting.  And even cow power is lighting up the barns

by NORMAN DUNN

At farm equipment shows, it’s the dramatic innovations that grab attention. For instance, the very term “diesel-electric tractor” promised something new and exciting at the Agritechnica exhibition in Germany in November.

Innovative products for school children, low calories dairy foods and exotic new flavours are helping European dairy producers keep market share and prices up

by NORMAN DUNN

Blending butter with green clover, cream cheese with apples, onions and raw herring or creating fruit yogurts and milk drinks especially for four-year-olds – there’s always something new from the dairy industry in Europe. And these initiatives are helping to keep total sales turnovers high.

In fact, the market and the prices that farmers get for their milk depend as never before on these innovative product developers, according to a survey this year by the respected Dutch University of Wageningen’s Economic Research Institute (LEI).

European dairy farmers claim they’ve been producing below the economic break-even point for years and staging ‘milk strikes’ in protest. But this time some are ignoring the call to action

by NORMAN DUNN

European consumers seem to be getting very tired of so-called “milk strikes” – where dairy farmers protest against low producer prices by simply pouring their milk down the drain or by blockading and stopping deliveries to processing plants.

In early summer last year, there was more popular backing for militant action when milk prices slumped for months below €0.30 or 46 Canadian cents per kilogram. The price of production on the farm averaged 60 cents, claimed the European dairy farmers’ association (EMB).

Pioneering farmers in Britain and the Netherlands are finding that both plants and animals perform better in bright and airy conditions.

by NORMAN DUNN

Plenty of light and fresh air. That was the prescription that family doctors used to bring to the farmhouse when visiting sick kids.

Nowadays, in Europe anyway, doctors who actually leave their surgeries to visit homes are mostly a thing of the past. But there’s the beginning of a revival for daylight and fresh air as remedies against disease and depression. And there are a few pioneers taking this dictum straight onto the farm for more performance from crops and cattle.

Only 40 years ago, British beef cattle breeders fought to stop the import of ‘exotic’ continental beef breeds. Now genes from both British and mainland European cattle are merged in hybrid lines, resulting in still better performance

by NORMAN DUNN

Surely the biggest changes in the last 40 years in beef production feature the ever-increasing number of breeds involved. I won’t say “new breeds,” because their respective forbears were often first described 200 years ago or even further back in time – in forgotten corners of France, in Italy or way up in the Bavarian Alps.

Some 335 of them contribute biogas to the national grid. Now a plan is afoot to develop a tractor in part fuelled by gas produced on the farm itself

by NORMAN DUNN

There can’t be many countries in the world with a government so dedicated to its farmers’ well-being and business success as Austria.

Here’s a relatively small Alpine republic that encourages organic management because its farms are small (average 45 acres) and because organic foods offer a much better income compared with conventional output. Generous production aid and an annual advisory budget of C$13 million dedicated to organic output mean that 16 per cent of the nation’s 190,000 farms have now gone organic.

In Alpine areas, milking herds remain small and still offer a good living for farming families

by NORMAN DUNN

The end of political control for on-farm milk production in Europe looms ahead with the so-called quota regulation planned to stop in 2015. The response of farmers from Sweden to Spain is already clear: “If there’s no control, let’s expand.”

This strategy for reducing production costs has already brought farm milk prices crashing down throughout the European Union (EU). But the accepted wisdom still seems to be: Expand for survival and, if you can’t grow, get out.

Financiers are seeing farmers in a new light after the serial crashes of city businesses. As a result, credit might be easier to come-by this year for European dairy farms planning expansion

by NORMAN DUNN

Was there any good news amongst the doom and gloom of the global financial crisis this last winter? It seems there was – and it was directed right at farmers.