“If this continues the way it is going, there won’t be any dairy cows in left in Granada,” said on dairy-herd owner in Churriana (Granada outskirts).

He is referring to the fact that they are getting paid the same price per litre for their milk as they were 20 or 30 years ago, yet shelf prices just continue to go up. “We sell at 30 centimes per litre,” the dairy farmer explained. But what is really hurting is that the cost of producing milk is soaring; electricity for example. A farm-union representative (Asaja) for the sector puts the price for producing a litre at 37 centimes. So it’s not a case of narrowing profits, but selling at a loss.

Many people who have lived for decades on the coast haven’t ever seen a cow, much less a dairy herd, yet Granada has 30 dairy farms scattered across the province.

Spain consumes 9m tonnes of milk, six of which are produced in Spain with the rest being imported mainly from France and Germany. The spokesman for a national farmers union, COAG, considers that Spain is being had by these two countries who manage to export their excess production at below market prices. “We’ll find out just how milk can cost when our national production goes down,” said its spokesman.

A final point to muse over: in the last 15 years the number of dairy herds in Andalucia has gone down from 1,850 to around 800…

(News: Province of Granada, Andalucia)