The Andalusian dairy farmers are facing Lactalis, owner of Puleva and a large milk producer with headquarters in Lugo and factories in Granada, Lleida and Lugo. The confrontation for now only affects the Andalusian community and has its origin in the price at which the company wants to buy -51 cents per liter in round numbers-, and at which the producers want to sell -around 60 cents per liter-, according to Data from the COAG agricultural union, which Lactalis prefers not to clarify. Nine cents is the difference. As the buyer-seller figure approaches, the company has stopped sending tankers to collect milk from farms, in an attempt to pressure farmers to accept its price. Many of them, however, have decided not to sell at that little more than half a euro and prefer to throw away the milk: 100,000 liters a day end up in the pipes, according to COAG, so that on Friday the number of liters thrown away already reaches half a million of liters. Puleva Lactalis figures the milk thrown in less quantity, without specifying.
Milk prices are set in contracts that, before, were stipulated annually and today, given the volatility of the prices of electricity, feed, etc., are set every three or four months. This is how José Luis de la Rosa, head of COAG’s dairy cattle in Andalusia, explains it. De la Rosa, owner of a farm with 650 cattle, recounts how the situation has reached this point. The last contract, he clarifies, expired on March 31. The price that Puleva Lactalis paid to farmers was 59.4 cents per liter “which with some supplements can be rounded up to 60”. The usual thing, he comments, is that two months before, the company sends a price proposal to the Organization of Dairy Producers (OPL) of the South, which represents Andalusian dairy producers, whether they are cooperatives or independent producers.
“And so it happened,” says Juan Rafael Leal Rubio, president of the OPL del Sur. The proposal was, he says, “for a drop of four cents compared to the previous price”, about 55 cents per liter. “Then, in successive conversations, they lowered one cent and then another. And the final proposal was 51 cents per liter, nine cents less”. The first figure, that of 55 cents, was not perfect for the ranchers, but it was a good starting point: “From there, we could negotiate some increase and it would be a reasonable price for everyone,” defends Leal. But the negotiation was closed by surprise when the end of the contract was reached: the Puleva Lactalis proposal was for 51 cents per liter, “without any negotiation,” says Leal Rubio.
Ignacio Elola, CEO of Grupo Lactalis Iberia, explains to this newspaper: “Without going into detail about the figure we are proposing, it is true that it is an adjustment compared to the previous price. And it is because the circumstances that caused inflation in 2022 are no longer there. Feed, energy and the lower production at that time have improved and that is where the adjustment we propose arises”. And he adds: “We will pay Andalusian farmers, even so, more than in all of Europe. In Germany, in summer, milk is paid to the farmer at between 38 and 40 cents per litre”. The president of the OPL del Sur, who is also a cooperative member of COVAP, the Cooperativa del Valle de Los Pedroches, in Córdoba, compares Puleva’s proposal to its farmers with that of COVAP to its cooperative members: “Three cents less than the previous price versus the nine.
The end of the contract in March without a signed renewal did not mean the end of milk collection. Milk from its suppliers continued to arrive at the Puleva factory throughout the month of April, at a rate of some 600,000 liters per day, according to COAG. The ranchers have sold, but, they say, they don’t really know at what price they will charge those 18 million liters. In any case, before May 1, the company was planted. Without a signed contract, she was not willing to collect more milk. And since Monday, no truck contracted by the firm for this has made its collection route again. It is then that the producers launched the “I throw away my milk” plan. Ignacio Elola limits the problem to some cooperatives: “Independent producers do provide us with milk.” Elola estimates the daily liters that they are receiving this week in Granada at 200,000, a third of what is usual. The rest is thrown away, made into cheese, or sold to other factories, depending on who you talk to.
From COAG they explain that they throw away the milk because they cannot sell it directly. “It may seem unsupportive, but as producers, either we sell or we throw away. We cannot commercialize it because we do not have the permits or the infrastructure for it”. They have tried to sell it to other companies: “COVAP and even García Vaquero have offered us to buy it at higher prices than those offered by Puleva, but when we have gone to the tanker truck companies, they explain to us that it is impossible for them to collect the milk because they are under pressure not to do it”.
The person in charge of dairy cattle at COAG, José Luis de la Rosa, puts the cost of milk production at between 57 and 58 cents at this time. “We are facing not only the shortage of everything we need to support the cows, but also shortages.” And he adds: “I have asked for a million kilos of straw, but they only assure me a little less than half. And there I am looking for where I find what I lack ”. The head of Lactalis Iberia is convinced that they will reach an agreement. “The Granada factory has 600 workers, 25% of our workforce. We have not closed the door to negotiation and we are looking for creative ways to find a solution”, he affirms.
no water no milk
Each of José Luis de la Rosa’s 650 cows drink between 120 and 150 liters of water in summer on his farm in Utrera (Seville). To this we must add the liquid that is required to clean, to cool, etc. “On average, we reach a water consumption per cow of around 200 liters per day,” explains de la Rosa. In another comparison, each liter of milk requires four liters of water. A serious problem with the current drought. In summer, he adds, “we are going to see a lot of dairy cows slaughtered for meat because there will not be enough to give it a drink or they will have to pay for it at the price of gold.”
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