What can you do when the milk that your dairy farm produced earns less than it costs you to produce it? The answer, of course, is very little.

OK, if it is a bad month, you just have to write the month off – you win some, you lose some, but for many of the 27 dairy farms in our province, it is not a case of the odd bad month, but a string of them, one after the other.

Farming costs are rocketing, especially electricity, fuel costs and feed for the herd.

These hard-working farmers – work on a farm is an exacting and continuous struggle – work from before the sun comes up to after it goes down, seven days a week… and they are literally working for free. Less, in fact, because instead of earning their keep, they are having to spend their savings or in debt themselves further with banks.

Many of us had lived for years on the coast before seeing cows in a field because you have to go inland to find them. The dairy farm near the Pantano de Bermejales has long disappeared and now the score of dairy farms that are left will follow them.

The farmers union, ASAJA offered these figures: it costs 40 centimes to produce a litre of milk in 2021 but farmers are forced to sell it at the pre-established price of 33 centimes a litre because that was the agreed price for the year… and before electricity, grain and fuel went through the roof.

The 27 dairy farms in Granada produce 41m litres of milk a year meaning that the sector has lost 2.8m euros during 2021.

Now everything hinges on the price-per-litre that will be reached for 2022 and if they are going to be like last year, then we could see the demise of the dairy sector in the province.

(News: Granada, Andalucia)