With their demand of significantly higher prices for agricultural products, the associations and organisations in the Milk Dialogue have added their voice to the calls for changes to the market framework conditions anchored in the EU’s Common Market Organisation (CMO). At the same time, the Milk Dialogue is explicitly in favour of market forces playing their part and keeping political market intervention to the bare minimum.

This leads us to the following demands:

• The existing safety net for agricultural markets in Europe must be more effective in the face of market crises. Temporary volume reduction measures must take precedence over intervention storage for surplus production. This would require an early warning mechanism, the introduction of a system of voluntary volume reduction during market crises, the introduction of temporary capping on delivery volumes, and the establishment of a crisis management and monitoring system based on the EU Milk Market Observatory.

• Implementation of Article 148 CMO: adoption of Article 148 CMO as proposed by the European Parliament. This would make contractual specific agreements on price, volume, duration and quality a requirement while concluding written delivery contracts for agricultural products with processing companies.

• Exclusive interbranch organisation for milk producers: In order to continue to effectively represent and further the market interests of farmers in an increasingly monopolistic market environment, it is essential to first create the political framework to recognise the sector as a player in its own right. According to the current Article 157 CMO, an interbranch organisation can only be created if at least two stakeholders in the value chain express the need to do so.  The associations and organisations of the Milk Dialogue hereby demand amendment of Article 157 CMO in this regard. As an independent representation of producer interests, a recognised interbranch organisation for (milk) producers at EU level could, in addition to the existing list of duties (such as communication with the sector, digitisation, etc.), also ensure that the market position of producers along the value chain is significantly improved and that market-based solutions actually allow producers to earn a profitable income from the sale of their agricultural products.

Milk Dialogue: discussions between food retailers, processors and farmers’ unions

Due to the country-wide protests by the Milk Dialogue as well as other farmer organisations in Germany, food retailers agreed to meet in order to discuss farmers’ demands. Origin labelling for food products will also be discussed.

The BDM and the Milk Dialogue are represented by one member in the steering committee, which includes representatives from the four food retailers and processors as well as five representatives from farmers’ organisations. The steering committee oversees the Milk & Beef, Pig Meat and Origin Labelling working groups, and the Milk Dialogue is part of the Milk & Beef working group. These discussions are still in their initial stages, which is why the timeline for potential outcomes is yet to be determined.

Dairy Farmer Day in Schleswig-Holstein

Due to current COVID-19-related restrictions, Schleswig-Holstein organised their annual Dairy Farmer Day for the first time in a digital format. The topic was “Future of the dairy market from an environmental, economic and social perspective.” It included a presentation by Jan Philipp Albrecht, Minister of Schleswig-Holstein for Energy Transition, Agriculture, Environment, Nature and Digitalisation, where he described the current situation from a political perspective. Dr Thomas Bahr was also invited to talk about the current situation on farms. The main points of his presentation were the lack of liquidity and poor returns. Not only did he describe the current reality, he also attempted to provide some insight into future prospects.

EMB Executive Committee member Elmar Hannen was also part of the panel discussion on the Common Market Organisation.

Bundesverband Deutscher Milchviehhalter e. V.

"World feels the heat – Climate & Change" is the theme for the articles in this year’s Critical Agricultural Report (Kritischer Agrarbericht).

Most things came to a standstill in 2020, global supply chains collapsed, and the increasingly globalised part of the agricultural system was no exception. It is still too early to know what concrete effects the COVID-19 crisis and its economic consequences will have on mitigating the two other global crises faced by humankind – the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis. However, it is becoming ever clearer that all these crises cannot be looked at in isolation and that they must be confronted with a holistic approach. In this regard, there is no way around the fact that how farming is organised across the globe plays a significant role.

What we need is a fundamental transformation of the agricultural and food system. A global transition that must live up to regional challenges and must never lose sight of climate change. Even though agriculture undoubtedly suffers directly due to global warming, certain forms of agriculture and diet are also some of the biggest drivers of this phenomenon.

That being said, this is also an immense opportunity: the ecological agricultural and food transition is proving to be an absolutely integral piece of the puzzle to bring on the urgently needed “climate transition”. Half of the articles in this report look at pioneering and inspiring examples as well as scientific findings that show how all of this could actually work.

The articles are available here (in German only) or can be ordered as a book as well.

AgrarBündnis is a consortium that currently brings together 26 independent organisations from the agricultural sector, environmental and nature protection, animal welfare, as well as consumer protection and development policy, and has more than one million individual members.

Abridged and adapted version of flyer by AgrarBündnis.