The French Minister for Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll will call for an intervention price increase at next months emergency meeting of European Agriculture Ministers.
At a recent meeting of French dairy industry stakeholders the situation of the international market was discussed including the highly degraded international prices for butter and milk powder.
The French Minister reiterated his determination to obtain measures at EU level and in particular increasing the intervention price. For the Council to be held on September 7, he called the producers and industry to mobilize their networks at European level.
Le Foll called on all stakeholders in the French dairy sector to responsibility.
He said it is now necessary to give positive outlook prices to farmers by the end of 2015, which is, he said very difficult right now in an international context and means France must further enhance the value of milk on its domestic market.
The distributors in France are committed to pay in the month of August, as part of bilateral negotiations with suppliers, rate increases on a number of price products and private label.
Dairy processors have agreed to pass on all the increases granted by the distributors to farmers.
The French Minister said he would meet the industry again after the Agriculture Council of Ministers on September 7 to take stock.
Poland and Belgium recently moved to follow Lithuania’s lead in selling dairy product into intervention.
It now means that there is currently just under 1,200t of skimmed milk powder (SMP) in public intervention with Belgium offering 250t and Poland 320t last week.
Lithuania which was the first country to use the measure since 2009 offered a further 320t of (SMP) last week taking their total amount of product in intervention to 606t.
Following the growing concern about the economic situation in the dairy sectors in certain Member States of the EU, the Luxembourg Presidency decided to convene an extraordinary Agriculture Council meeting on Monday, September 7, 2015, in Brussels.
At the last meeting of European Agriculture Ministers, the Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney asked EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan to give serious consideration to an intervention price increase.