1.500 dairy farmers at meeting in West France - main toppic - milk delivery strike

The APLI - French dairy farmer organisation introduces itself

APLI was formed in the southwest of France in December 2008.
From a handful of producers refusing subservience and manipulation, a national movement was born, one that with rapid growth is now a cornerstone and mainstay of the French dairy industry.
The interest we arouse on the highest levels, the incipient media coverage, the concerns we instil with our determination and above all the awareness we have created out in the field and on the street mean that APLI, the grass-roots milk producers, are just a few steps away from taking control of the system.
This mobilisation, proportional to the urgency of the situation, has only been possible thanks to the strong surge to follow our argumentation in the major milk-producing regions of our country.

A website visited with ever increasing frequency (www.apli-nationale.org), meetings every day throughout France in packed rooms, a joining of forces exceeding the expectations of the movement’s founders – this is all proof that the French producers are firm in their conviction.

Because our position is simple and logical. Our actions are legal and in partnership with consumers.

The APLI attracts members of every association, political and geographical background.

We advocate a return to control of volumes in line with the markets, a milk price indexed to production costs and the producer’s pay (currently € 400), a rebuttal of any form of imposed contract system.

We firmly believe that these demands must be European.

These are the reasons why APLI joined the EMB.

Governments created the political and administrative Europe to become stronger.

Industry and banks combined to shape the economic Europe as they pleased and in their own interest.

It is up to us, the grass-roots producers, in tune with consumers, to invent the one and only true, fair, reassuring, united Europe of the citizens.

APLI is convinced that only milk producers have the means to assert their demands firmly and decisively. And that is the milk strike.

The French milk producers, weary of traditional means of applying pressure that are unfocused, violent and seldom persuasive, realise that they are responsible for the failure of the first milk strike. They know that their forward-looking European colleagues in the EMB do not hold it against them. But they also know that they will be a reference point for this movement in terms of both response and scale.

This is the message APLI is conveying out in the field.

And it is being very well received…

Of course APLI is working on life after the milk strike.

Price indexing, control of volumes, partnership with business.

But we are a young organisation, and that coupled with the urgency of the situation has made us change our timetable, the total restructuring of the dairy industry necessitating a concept of time that is too long-term.

Faithful to our logic and our simplicity, the solution is all too obvious to us:

When we have a milk price of € 400 a ton, we will have all the time in the world to negotiate….

The APLI Board