On the list of the largest milk producers, Poland is currently ranked twelfth in the world and fourth in the EU. Domestic consumers also appreciate them. However, the situation in the industry is adversely affected by the pandemic and the related restrictions for restaurateurs and hoteliers as well as price fluctuations on the market. 

"We want to encourage greater consumption of milk in Poland, but we also want to show consumers that behind the milk they buy in the store is a specific breeder and his work," the initiators of the campaign from the Polish Federation of Cattle Breeders and Milk Producers, emphasized.

“The coronavirus pandemic has caused very large disturbances in the dairy industry. The slowdown in foreign trade caused the product prices and, at the same time, the prices of the raw material to drop significantly. Prices in the European Union have been on an upward trend since the middle of this year. In September, the average price of milk in Poland was PLN 1.38 per liter. We anticipate that these prices will go up at the end of this year, while the pandemic makes the market unpredictable and we do not know what consequences the second wave will bring to our industry,” Dorota Śmigielska, milk market analyst at the Polish Federation of Cattle Breeders and Milk Producers, vice-president of the Milk and Dairy Products Working Group at Copa-Cogeca, said.

The PFHBiPM expert emphasized that the pandemic and the turbulences caused by it are not the only problems that Polish breeders have to face. In the last two years, it was also a severe drought, which affected the quality and quantity of available feed, which in turn translated into an increase in production costs. Meanwhile, the buying-in price that milk producers receive is already in many cases at or below the production costs.

(Newseria)