“Milk production is going through a very difficult time due to the unprecedented increase in the price of production factors, namely fuel, animal feed and fertilisers. The transmission of price along the value chain has been practically nil, so the dairy sector has accumulated unbearable losses,” the National Federation of Milk Producers Cooperatives (Fenalac) said in a statement.

This federation regretted that, given the current situation, the tutelage had adopted some “very penalising” decisions, such as the National Strategy for Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Effluents (ENEAPAI 2030), “based on gross technical calculations and errors”.

Fenalac faced with “astonishment” the publication of the ordinance that regulates this strategy at the end of the legislature, without taking into account the considerations of agricultural organisations.

Thus, milk producer cooperatives will request the immediate “suspension” of this diploma.

“Milk producers are active managers of the landscape and the territory and, as such, they always have to be partners. We need balanced work proposals and not radical and economically unsustainable visions”, said the president of Fenalac, Idalino Leão.

Drought can also worsen the situation of the sector, leading to an increase in expenses, as producers will have to buy more feed for animals.

Producers therefore ask for the adoption of a set of measures to mitigate these impacts, such as the temporary exemption from Social Security payments, updating aid for agricultural diesel, support for the purchase of animal feed or the reformulation of aid for green electricity.