Key Benefits:
PORTUGUESE COMMUNIST PARTY
Parliamentary Group
Draft Resolution No 505 /X/4.
It recommends the Government to adopt measures of
IMMEDIATE SUPPORT FOR THE PRODUCTION OF NATIONAL MILK
At risk of liquidation the dairy farms of the Country
1. An unsustainable situation
The conjugation of the low price of milk paid to the producers with the rising costs of
production makes it unsustainable the survival of thousands of dedicated livestock farms
to the production of milk. What will determine a new 'forced' restructuring of the sector
productive, after the "expulsion" carried out in the last two decades, which translated by the
passage in 12 years from more than 80 thousand dairy farms to about 11 thousand, half of the
which has less than 50 cows. The measures taken recent and tardily by the Government (and
by the European Union) are far from responding to the seriousness of the situation, most looking like
want to take advantage of the crisis, to realize that new restructuring, with the elimination of the
milk production of more than a few thousand producers and some regions of the Country, as
Rear-the-Montes, Beira Interior and Alentejo. The blackmail made on the producers of these
last regions (Planalto Mirander, District of the Guard), by national and Spanish companies,
with the threat and, in some cases, the delivery of the non-collection of milk, translates into
ruin prices for production (below 25 cents) and the practice extinction, short term,
of the activity!
2. The low price of milk is particularly linked to the import of milk from countries of the
European Union at balance prices
Many are the arguments thrown out to justify the low price of milk, in general to
absolve decisions and behaviours of economic and political actors with paper
determinant in the row, and main responsible for the problems referred to. There's even who if
dare to say that it is to defend Portuguese consumers! The Government, through the
Minister of Agriculture, always begins by denying the problem to justify his
inactivity and, fundamentally, to hide its responsibilities in the approval of
a suicidal community policy for the production of national milk. But when the shops of
a large distribution group (SONAE) start to sell the milk package (UHT/half
fat), imported from Germany, at 39 cents everything becomes clear. Because of the two, one. Or the
milk is sold below its final cost (cost of production, packaging and transport), without
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commercial margin and with injury to the trader, which is prohibited and punishy by the rules
of the competition, or is purchased in that country below the local costs of production, at the price of
balance, probably with state supports, and we are in the face of a dumping process,
prohibited in the European Union. How is it possible that milk coming from Germany could be sold
in Portugal, to the consumer, at prices that are insufficient to compensate for production
national, which complains a minimum of 40 cents / litre?! It is criminal that a Country with a
external deficit above 10% and an external indebtedness that rounds off the 100% of GDP,
continue to import millions (250 million? ??) of litres of milk from Europe (Germany, France,
Poland, Spain) while there are in stock millions of litres (there are months existed 60
million) of national production!
3. The settlement of dairy quotas and the liberalisation of the dairy market
This situation is on the basis of a structural issue: consolidation in the European Union in the
last years, under the thrust of the Northern countries, major producers and exporters of milk
(Denmark, Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom and others), of the purpose of revision of the Organization
Common of the Leite Market with the settlement of the system of dairy quotas. Purpose to
that no Portuguese Government has objected radical and frontally, including by invoking the
vital interests of the Country. Path made, as always, from small steps, "facilitating" the
cedances and the justifications of governments such as the Portuguese. Path started in 1999, in the
scope of the reform of the CAP (Agenda 2000), which had the agreement of the then Government PS/Guterres
(was Minister of Agriculture Capoulas Santos, and had as an aide in Brussels the current
Minister Jaime Silva), where he set the end of the quotas for 2008. What was changed in
2003, postponing the death sentence to 2015. Path that was restarted in 2008 (Council
of Ministers of Agriculture of March 17), likewise with the agreement of the present Government and of the
Minister of Agriculture (Germany and Austria voted against it and France abstained), accepting
an increase of 2% overall and equal for all Member States-which meant producing
plus 2.8 million litres of milk in Europe in campaign 2008 (01Abril) / 2009 (31Março). What
had the well-known epilogue at the Council of Agriculture Ministers of November 20
past (consolidated result in the Council of Ministers of 18/20 December) with the
acceptance of the settlement of the quota to be provided, through an annual increase of 1% to
all countries (for Italy the increase was in a one-time provision of 5%), " in order to prepare the
his disappearance, scheduled for 2015 " (from the Communiqué of the Council of Ministers). Shape
of ending quotas by ensuring a so-called "soft landing", because it would do without "pain"
of the producers, who would go "habituating", preparing their final settlement by uselessness
in 2015! What happened was that the latest measures of quota increases "have legalized"
the surpluses, which some of these countries were producing for there from quotas, and which now
appear in the European market at balance prices. Someone believes that Europe, like
want some, because of the crisis, reduced their milk consumes in nature and dairy products
in such a way as to provoke the surpluses that now appear on the market? The result of the
settlement of the milk quotas will be the end of dairy production, not just as it comes
happening in so-called marginal, non-efficient zones and explorations, but in countries such as
Portugal, even in the dairy basins of the Entre Douro and Minho and Beira Litoral, which never
will be able to compete with the dairy areas of Northern Europe, or worse, on the market
worldwide, with the holdings of thousands of cows from the USA, New Zealand or Australia.
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Without referring here and now the decisions, never explained, of the Government in lowering the rate of VAT
(reduced rate of 5%) for some imported dairy products and soybean substitutes in the Budget
of the State for 2008, the conjuncture experienced in the sector results, then, in the essentials of power
dominant that large distribution groups have acquired in Europe and Portugal, and of the
processes of complete liberalisation of agri-food markets which, in the wake of the
successive negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union will
approving. Guidelines that have presided over the negotiations and reforms of the Joint Organizations
of Market (CMO) of milk, such as wine and other agricultural products. On the other hand, the
impositions and demands of the great distribution in its relations with the dairy industry
(differentiated margins as it is about their brands, white brands, or brands
of the manufacturers, clausulado leonino in supply contracts, systematic practices of
guaranteed margins, management of spaces and categories, payment deadlines, etc., etc.),
narrow or eliminate even the margins of the manufacturer, which then makes repertoire such a fact
on the first link of the value chain: the producer!
4. The rise in production costs
It is also clear that the problem of the unbearable low yield of the activity of the
dairy farms, and of other agri-farming productions, is not only the result of the low
of the price of milk, but of the conjugation of that fact with the brutal rise in costs of the
main factors of production (diesel, rations, fertilisers, electricity) verified in the 1.
semester of 2008, accompanying the galloping of oil prices. Prices that if
have essentially maintained in the 2 th semester and that they have prolonged in 2009, despite the
some declines. And when some, among them the Government, value the prices paid to the
production in Portugal, relatively abroad, always forget this other face of the
currency, which are the generally lower prices to which the farmers in these countries
pay for the factors of production (and other costs such as Social Security), in general
strongly supported by their states.
It also forgets the Government the effect of some of its decisions, such as the elimination of the
green electricity (which aimed exactly to bring the cost of that energy factor into
Portugal to those of other countries), or the practice settlement of agro-environmental measures, which
were helping to balance some farms, or the absence of measures, not only claimed
as possible in the face of European legislation, such as the withdrawal of surplus calves and cows from
refugo, in a framework of rising rations, and with the market for beef under pressure,
also by imports made from Europe and, particularly, from Latin America.
Without capacity, or will, to carry out a permitting process of the
livestock farms that combine the defence of environmental standards with the safeguard of
actual structure of the Portuguese agri holdings, not transforming the process of
treatment of effluents in a new blow in the already fragile financial balances of the
explorations, the Government has wrapped up in a complex and bureaucratic legislative production of
framing, not yet complete, already revised and amended more than once, but without ever
take the appropriate public funding of the process, as a key issue. On the way to
Five years of Government, and the problem is worse that at square one: it created distrust and
animated in many the will to get out as soon as possible from production.
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Particularly serious in this context, is the complete paralysis of the Competition Authority
(AdC) which, despite alerted to the situation, continues without any relevant action from
approach to a market where it is manifested the gross violation of the rules that legally
it will be up to you Add also that, on the issues of competition, the
Ministry of Agriculture once again stood for platonic statements, at the exit of a
European Council-"it is up to the AdC to keep" attentive " to the situation in the sector, as the price of the
litre of milk in the consumer does not reflect the cost-verified declines at the level of the
production "!
5. A disintegrated view of the milk and dairy row
The milk and dairy row has no answer in a disintegrated view of the remaining
agrolivestock activities, and particularly of the beef market. The inability
to look at the reality of Portuguese farms, notably from agriculture
familiar yet dominant, leads to unsettling measures, unable to potentiate and enjoy
up to, the means that are sometimes made available. For what a lot also contributes a
policy of permanent affronting of agricultural confederations which, not being the ones
Government would wish, are the ones that exist! It is what succeeding with the tutelage process,
framing and technical-sanitary support for livestock farms that, having started poorly
there are many governments ago, continues without the necessary and sufficient response, overloading
the producers of standards, costs and fines, by fragmenting the weak edifice of animal health and,
indirectly, putting into question public health rules. That is what is happening with the
dismantling of the services of the Ministry of Agriculture, via PRACE and EMS (Situation of
Special Mobility), sidelining them from farmers and incapacitating them to intervene, making
even more time-consuming the processes.
The solution to structural and, particularly, conjunctural problems of the milk row and
dairy products will not pass through forcing the exit of a few thousand more producers, through a
any quota ransom, eliminating small or medium family farms
size or farmers of high age levels, or still production in so-called areas
"marginal". On the contrary, the central issue is to create conditions for the current
producers to stay in business, even if with their "refreshment" by young people
farmers who have been instilted in the row. What does not mean the absence of mechanisms
suitable that can support the change of activity of the agricultural holding. But the
essential direction of policy should be to encourage the maintenance of the activity in the row,
saved exceptional situations.
The definition of a dairy policy, taking aim at the search for viable exploitation,
efficient or competitive by eliminating the smallest / lowest number of cows, as it has
happened in the last few years, is to pursue an unreachable goal, error of a strategy that
will end up discovering that so-called "viable" holdings are located only in the countries of the
North of Europe, in the USA, New Zealand or USA! The proper strategy can only have as
objective to ensure, in a framework of sustainability and productive diversity, with how much
baste of specialization (in the face of a small country and relative soils ' exiguity
agricultural), the maximum of agro-food production, in the whole of the national territory, targeting the
security and food sovereignty.
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Thus, under Article 4 (1) (b) of the Rules of the Assembly of the Republic,
the undersigned Deputies of the Parliamentary Group of the CFP propose that the Assembly of the
Republic recommends to the Government, pursuant to Article 166 (5) of the Constitution of the
Portuguese Republic, to adopt the following measures:
1. Immediate Measures that would crash the degradation of producers ' incomes
(i) institute, in the framework of the minimis aid, a compensation up to 5 cents per litre for the
family farms family up to 100 cows in production, and while it last the present
low prices;
(ii) to repose the green electricity for all livestock holdings and to ensure, equally,
differential and higher support for green diesel, never less than 5%;
(iii) suspension for the period of 6 months of social security contributions, to
similarity of what was done in 2008 to the fisheries sector, with the due transfer of the
Budget of the State for Social Security of the necessary monies;
(iv) triggering an intervention plan supported for withdrawal of newborn calves and
cows of refuges;
(v) propose to the AdC to urgently trigger a mechanism for monitoring prices
of inputs, such as rations, pesticides and fertilizers;
(vi) to create, in the framework of the agro-environmental measures, an aid to the collection and concentration of
milk in mountainous and disadvantaged areas;
(vii) negotiate and ensure with the companies of the domestic industry the guarantee of runoff,
under acceptable conditions, of the milk today produced in these areas;
(viii) enlargement of the new agro-environmental measure, announced by the Government for sheep and
goats (250 euros / hectare), in mountain regions or at risk of depopulation, for the
production of milk and beef cattle ranching;
(ix) rapid completion of the control processes of livestock farms that are preventing
hundreds of farmers from receiving the RPU aid of 2008, to which they are entitled.
2. urgent sanitation measures of the milk and dairy fillet
(i) quick start of negotiations between production, industry and trade, under the coordination of the
State, aiming at the concertation and the taking of measures, with the aim of stabilizing the
markets, ensure the marketing of appropriate levels of national production, inclusive
of the existing stocks, and reduce the resource to imports;
(ii) immediate triggering of import measures of imported milk and dairy products and
marketed in the Country, aiming to check whether they comply with the hygieno-sanitary and the
competition, required by Portuguese laws and community standards; a particular attention
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should be given to milk and dairy products marketed under the vulgar designation of brands
white;
(iii) requirement that the AdC, in collaboration with the Centre for Agricultural Markets and
of the Agrofood Imports, intervene and urgently analyze commercial practices
of the various actors in the sector;
(iv) in the framework of the legislation in force-Law No. 18/2003 of June 11-approving the scheme
legal tender and, pursuant to Article 27 (Cautiary Measures), complain that the
AdC preemptively orders "the necessary measures to the immediate repose of competition"
and safeguard the interests of national production;
(v) the proposal for the AdC to request counterparts from the European Union for a meeting
for approach to the situation in the European milk and dairy market and possible violations
of the rules of the competition;
(vi) the proposal that the Portuguese government, on the basis of the huge disturbance verified in the
sector, which can definitely sweep away the dairy production of regions and even countries,
request the realization of an Extraordinary Council of Agriculture Ministers for debate and
taking of measures, aiming at the reposition of the milk quota system, the sole form of
ensure that Portugal and other states are going to maintain production;
(vii) monitoring and assessment of the situation of the market for other dairy products and the
beef market, with a view to possible regularizing interventions;
(viii) rapid creation of the normative framework for the voluntary implementation of a
quality label (Label Q), which allows full movability, from the farm to the
industry, and the easy visibility by the consumer of the origin of the product.
3. Measures that repose reasonable levels of economic-financial balance of the
explorations
(i) financial support for the treasury of the holdings, with the creation of a line of credit with
bonified interest at 100%, grace period of one year and a payment term never
less than 5 years;
(ii) long term credit line creation (never less than 20 years) with a rate of
bonification of 50% aiming at the undivided;
(iii) creation of credit line under conditions similar to that in (ii) for investment;
(iv) rapid operationalisation and shortening of deadlines in the processing of aid
intended for the row, within the framework of the ProDeR;
(v) evaluation, elaboration and proposition to the European Union of anticipatory mechanisms and
payment Celere to the producers of supports and aid for income and investment;
(vi) suspension of the current licensing processes of livestock farms and
reconsideration, in dialogue with the associative structures of farmers, of the whole
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legislative framework, aiming at its simplification and adjustment to the reality of the fabric
productive livestock, with the concurrent definition of the supporting and redistribution of costs.
Assembly of the Republic, June 4, 2009
The Deputies,
AUGUSTINE LOPES; JOSÉ SOEIRO; JOÃO OLIVEIRA; HONORIUS NEW; BERNARDINO
SOARES; ANTÓNIO FILIPE; BRUNO DIAS; JORGE MACHADO; MIGUEL TIAGO; FRANCISCO
LOPES