The dairy farmers’ march crawled along between Ovar and Estarreja and aimed to demand better prices and more support for the producers as well as the replacement of the milk quota system.
Portugal’s Ministry for Agriculture has pledged more support after the prices dropped dramatically in recent months.
Agriculture Minister Luís Capoulas Santos said the country’s milk producers deserve the government’s full support and reiterated the drop in prices and the need for milk quotas to be reintroduced by the EU.
“I know the dairy farmers, and they know me. They know that I am always behind them and know that I have always defended this sector, which is one that perhaps requires the greatest efforts and endures the greatest hardships, since it is a industry in which farmers work 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The cows are milked at least twice every 24 hours” the Minister said in comments to Lusa News Agency.
On Tuesday the government announced a new set of very short-term support measures for the milk sector, which will be discussed in the Council of Ministers and will strengthen aid already in place for the sector.
“It is a sector that deserves the support of the Government and deserves that the Portuguese Government takes issue in Brussels for one of the measures that the Government is most supportive of, which is the need to restore the system of milk quotas in the European Union,” said Capoulas Santos .
“The European Union made a wrong decision in ending the quota system”, he stressed, adding: “In doing so it unplugged all the production potential of Europe, increased supply, and in a market’s economy when there is an increased supply, prices fall”, he concluded.