Dairy farmers protest against economic hardships

A number of local cattle breeders and daily farmers blocked for several hours yesterday the main Baalbaq highway, at Sar’een village intersection, in the Beqaa area in protest over what they termed the “blackmailing practiced by milk factory owners” as well as against government negligence in implementing its decisions. The Ministry of Agriculture, it will be recalled, agreed to fix the price of one liter of milk at L.L 1100. The protests came after the sudden drop in prices from L.L1100 to L.L700 for one kg as well as in demand.  “A real economic crisis is unfolding which is not acceptable to us,” said one farmer, Hussein Shuman. “Dairy farmers have become heavily indebted to fodder suppliers after successive losses resulting from government negligence in reinforcing the agreed price of milk. Furthermore, the government has failed to put an end to the import of Turkish, Egyptian and Syrian dairy products, like labneh, cheese and smuggled milk and powder milk. Another farmer added that the current action will expand to Zahleh and elsewhere until the concerned authorities decide to act to protect local farmers against exploitation by dairy cartels and indefinitely stop the import of powdered milk. The farmers’ latest move coincided with a record drop in milk production, which will further aggravate the problem of the farmers. Official Statistics indicate that the domestic market needs over 300 tons of milk per day, whereby the current domestic production level barely reaches 200 tons. Despite this large imbalance between supply and demand which should be favorable to local dairy farmers, yet the latter are still unable to market their production. (As Safir, 23 February 2015)