EUROPE’S FARM chief called on retailers yesterday not to make EU consumers pay excessively for staple foods such as bread and milk despite recent surges in international grain and dairy markets.
In an entry posted on her blog, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said the recent price rises were “no more and no less than the market in action” and reflected well on EU farm policy reforms agreed back in 2003.
Still, it hurt consumers in their pockets when food prices went up, she said, also hinting that some rises at the retail end of the food chain might not always be justified.
“The increases in supermarket milk prices in some member states are definitely not warranted by the overall market supply situation in the EU,” Fischer Boel wrote on her website.
“As we all know, the contribution of the raw material to the final price of foods like bread is relatively small, so I hope that the supermarkets and discounters will act responsibly.”
EU dairy prices have rocketed in recent months, especially for butter and skimmed milk powder, partly due to a much firmer world market but also because of very tight EU-27 conditions.
But the rises have been far sharper in some countries than others – notably in Germany and the Netherlands.
Wheat prices, for example, have surged some 75 per cent since April on both sides of the Atlantic after a dry northern hemisphere spring turned into a wet early summer. World stockpiles are also at their lowest in 25 years.
Fischer Boel was quick to slap down suggestions that European demand for biofuels, in part heightened by proposed EU targets of including a minimum 10 per cent biofuels within vehicle fuels by 2020, had helped to inflame the grain market.
“As far as grain prices are concerned, I am keen to refute the idea that some people are putting about that it is largely the recent interest in biofuels that is driving up prices,” she said.
“This is not the case – they play a marginal role at most in the EU context. More significant by far have been low harvests in many regions of the world, bad weather in Europe and growing demand from east Asia.”
Despite higher supermarket prices, European shoppers should still not shy away from paying a little extra for EU food if necessary, Fischer Boel said.
“I hope European consumers will put their money where their mouth is and be prepared to pay a little bit more for EU produce. Where we win out every time is in quality and in the attention we pay to animal welfare and the environment,” she wrote.
“That is something well worth paying for.” (R)
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