Analysis: Food crisis reaches Europe
Pastor Dale Morgan
Analysis: Food crisis reaches Europe*
by Stefan Nicola
Berlin (UPI) May 28, 2008
The global food crisis has reached Europe: While EU countries aim to
help stabilize food prices and increase aid to developing countries,
dairy farmers in Germany and in several other European countries
announced strikes that may render shelves empty.
Have you recently checked your shopping bill? Global food prices have
roughly doubled over the past three years, sparking demonstrations and
riots in several developing countries. Compared to eight years ago, when
EU nations joined efforts to -- among other projects -- halve the number
of people who suffer from hunger and extreme poverty by 2015 (the
so-called Millennium Development Goals), food prices even soared by 75
percent, according to a World Bank report.
Thus, the money allocated in 2000 to fight hunger is now falling
dangerously short. Of course, the EU still is the world's biggest donor,
but the amount of money donated by the EU in 2007 decreased for the
first time in seven years, by $2.5 billion to $72 billion -- a dangerous
development given the escalating prices not only for food, but also for
energy and steel.
Voices inside the EU at a Tuesday meeting in Brussels have called to
increase aid levels significantly by 2010. Over the past weeks, EU
officials have also talked about how to best control prices at home.
A hands-down subsidies war is being waged between the German and French
agricultural ministers, who stand on opposite sides of the field when it
comes to the milk quota. The quota was introduced in 1984 to regulate
dairy overproduction; experts are divided on whether it benefited or
hurt dairy farmers in Europe. France wants to raise quotas by 5 percent
until 2015, the year when the quotas are to be abolished. Germany is
against raising the quota (and thus production), as prices for milk
would likely fall even further.
And that's the ironic thing in the struggle: Despite rising food and
commodity prices, dairy products remain relatively cheap. So cheap, in
fact, that German dairy farmers Tuesday started a strike that is to last
until dairy factories offer them a higher price for their produce. While
the costs for cow feed, energy and fertilizer have shot up to the sky,
the money that farmers get for their milk has even dropped slightly.
They are getting between 27 eurocents and 35 eurocents, while production
costs tower at an estimated 33.2 eurocents. Farmers want 40 eurocents to
break even, and their demands -- the respective means -- are justified,
politicians say, because unlike the supermarkets, which are able to make
milk more expensive, the farmers get a fixed price for their produce.
"With every liter farmers are milking, they are coming one step closer
to bankruptcy," Ulrike Hoefken, a lawmaker from the German Green Party
and the head of the Agriculture Committee in Parliament, told German
radio station Deutschlandfunk. "The strike is their last chance."
And it could become a powerful tool to alert Germans to the problems
faced by their dairy farmers. While dairy factories claim they can
easily stem strike-related milk shortages, officials from the farmers'
union have warned that German customers may see empty shelves in
supermarkets as soon as the end of this week.
This could even be expanded to other countries. Stefan Mann, a senior
official at the Federation of German Dairy Farmers, told the Frankfurter
Rundschau newspaper that he expects several other European countries to
join the strike.
Already, farmers in the Netherlands are protesting, and Mann said he
expects solidarity from farmers in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium,
Luxembourg and France.
Better stock up on milk products, he added.