Tractors and Cows
Yesterday afternoon my daughter came home on the bus to attend a funeral. I drove her back in the evening to her student apartment. The round trip, going by highway (with an eagle eye out for radar guns) takes around an hour, depending on how long I stay to chat or the traffic in the city. Last night it was over an hour and a half. At least fifty minutes were spent trying to get into Santiago. I took the usual route and at a rotary where I would have had to turn right into the city, there was an informative policeman. He was turning many drivers away, who then went around the rotary and back where we came from. It was my turn and I asked, "Can I get to the street Carmen de Abaixo through the South Campus?" No, impossible. I could only do it through the back lanes which I had no idea how to get to. I would have to go through the center of town. The reason? The tractorada.
A tractorada is a parade of tractors blocking traffic. I later read in the digital newspapers that there were around three thousand tractors in the city of Santiago yesterday. I didn't see any but I was a witness to the chaos created. There have already been tractoradas in other cities, and in Lugo some have decided to camp out on the main street, the Ronda da Muralla. All this is in protest to the price the dairy farmers are being paid for the liter of milk. Galicia is the community with the most dairy farmers and the most production of milk. Yet the farmers only receive twenty-seven cents per liter produced. The cost of production this year is around thirty-four cents. Dairy farms are closing and others are threatening bankruptcy. Farmers are trying to grab the government's attention and demanding to sit down with industry leaders to set a minimum price for their milk that would allow them to breathe. The Galician farmers are the worst off, but in Asturias the liter of milk costs thirty-six cents and their farmers are being paid thirty-one. They've also protested, but by marching to Madrid on foot, on a Marcha Blanca, a White March. The industry, however, complains that the problem lies with the dairy farmers because they produce too much milk. And the dairy farmers say that was because the industry once convinced them that to have thriving farms, they needed to increase the heads of cattle and produce more milk. And that's what they did.
Once upon a time, many houses in many villages had one or two cows. What milk wasn't consumed at home was sold to an intermediary who would then sell it to a company that would come round with their truck to pick up the milk. Obviously, that wasn't enough production for a household to live off, but it provided some extra money. Farmers were made to see that they could make a living as dairy farmers by concentrating on raising milk cows and setting up their farms with modern machinery, etc. Many small households stopped having time to care for a cow, so they gave them up when the owners got to retirement age, my mother-in-law included. Large dairy farms have become a mainstay of the interior of Galicia, where there is little industry. What industry there is, is mostly dedicated to agrarian businesses, such as tractors and other farm machinery. If dairy farms aren't paid enough to meet costs and close, many businesses also face closure. The interior then would become even more depopulated than it is. Already villages in Lugo and Ourense are losing more people than are being born.
There can be quite a difference between what the farmers are paid for their milk and what we have to pay in the supermarkets. Prices range from fifty-five cents to eighty-six. Or more, in the case of specialty milks, such as with extra calcium and others. Farmers say final prices shouldn't go below fifty-nine or sixty cents to guarantee their liter is paid at cost. But the difference between eighty-six cents consumer price and twenty-seven cents origin price is an abysm. There are middle-men somewhere in there making a killing.
And that's why the tractors are in the streets of some cities, demanding the government sit down with them and leaders from the transformation industry and reach an agreement on a minimum price that will let them live. That was done earlier this year in France, but our government says that is illegal and minimum prices cannot be pacted by law. The European Union also won't intervene, it will merely hand out some money to some of the countries suffering from low prices at origin. But a farm that is losing money will not be helped in the long run by a simple one-time gift of maybe two thousand euros.
The farmers are now getting desperate. And if this situation continues much longer, the cities will also become desperate. The farmers participating in the tractorada in Lugo are going to be there indefinitely. In Santiago they say they'll be there at least until Thursday. Maybe longer. People understand their plight, but after a few days grumbling will set in. It's a delicate balance, interrupting daily business just enough to bring necessary attention and sympathy to cause a required change. But not too much that the sympathy disappears. And that the attention becomes unwanted riot police moving in to disperse the protest. Unfortunately, the Spanish government doesn't have the habit of listening to citizens' protests, preferring to believe in their own fairytale version of life in Spain. Let's see how this ends.
A tractorada is a parade of tractors blocking traffic. I later read in the digital newspapers that there were around three thousand tractors in the city of Santiago yesterday. I didn't see any but I was a witness to the chaos created. There have already been tractoradas in other cities, and in Lugo some have decided to camp out on the main street, the Ronda da Muralla. All this is in protest to the price the dairy farmers are being paid for the liter of milk. Galicia is the community with the most dairy farmers and the most production of milk. Yet the farmers only receive twenty-seven cents per liter produced. The cost of production this year is around thirty-four cents. Dairy farms are closing and others are threatening bankruptcy. Farmers are trying to grab the government's attention and demanding to sit down with industry leaders to set a minimum price for their milk that would allow them to breathe. The Galician farmers are the worst off, but in Asturias the liter of milk costs thirty-six cents and their farmers are being paid thirty-one. They've also protested, but by marching to Madrid on foot, on a Marcha Blanca, a White March. The industry, however, complains that the problem lies with the dairy farmers because they produce too much milk. And the dairy farmers say that was because the industry once convinced them that to have thriving farms, they needed to increase the heads of cattle and produce more milk. And that's what they did.
Once upon a time, many houses in many villages had one or two cows. What milk wasn't consumed at home was sold to an intermediary who would then sell it to a company that would come round with their truck to pick up the milk. Obviously, that wasn't enough production for a household to live off, but it provided some extra money. Farmers were made to see that they could make a living as dairy farmers by concentrating on raising milk cows and setting up their farms with modern machinery, etc. Many small households stopped having time to care for a cow, so they gave them up when the owners got to retirement age, my mother-in-law included. Large dairy farms have become a mainstay of the interior of Galicia, where there is little industry. What industry there is, is mostly dedicated to agrarian businesses, such as tractors and other farm machinery. If dairy farms aren't paid enough to meet costs and close, many businesses also face closure. The interior then would become even more depopulated than it is. Already villages in Lugo and Ourense are losing more people than are being born.
There can be quite a difference between what the farmers are paid for their milk and what we have to pay in the supermarkets. Prices range from fifty-five cents to eighty-six. Or more, in the case of specialty milks, such as with extra calcium and others. Farmers say final prices shouldn't go below fifty-nine or sixty cents to guarantee their liter is paid at cost. But the difference between eighty-six cents consumer price and twenty-seven cents origin price is an abysm. There are middle-men somewhere in there making a killing.
And that's why the tractors are in the streets of some cities, demanding the government sit down with them and leaders from the transformation industry and reach an agreement on a minimum price that will let them live. That was done earlier this year in France, but our government says that is illegal and minimum prices cannot be pacted by law. The European Union also won't intervene, it will merely hand out some money to some of the countries suffering from low prices at origin. But a farm that is losing money will not be helped in the long run by a simple one-time gift of maybe two thousand euros.
The farmers are now getting desperate. And if this situation continues much longer, the cities will also become desperate. The farmers participating in the tractorada in Lugo are going to be there indefinitely. In Santiago they say they'll be there at least until Thursday. Maybe longer. People understand their plight, but after a few days grumbling will set in. It's a delicate balance, interrupting daily business just enough to bring necessary attention and sympathy to cause a required change. But not too much that the sympathy disappears. And that the attention becomes unwanted riot police moving in to disperse the protest. Unfortunately, the Spanish government doesn't have the habit of listening to citizens' protests, preferring to believe in their own fairytale version of life in Spain. Let's see how this ends.
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