For the second week, Lithuania’s dairy farmers have been staging protests against low prices they are paid by processors. Rather than selling their milk, they have been giving it away to anyone with a bottle.
In Kaunas this week, people started queuing in a square from an early morning, expecting to catch protesting farmers and get some milk.
“Wonderful milk and curd very good,” says one. “We need to support the farmers, definitely.”
Farmer Aivaras Jonutis from the district of Prienai in southern Lithuania district says he has already given away about four tonnes of milk.
That represents great losses for his farm, but at current rates he is paid by processors, he would go under anyway, he says.
He now receives 25 cents per litre of raw milk, while his costs are 33 cents.
“[I wish to be paid] at least 45 cents, like last autumn. Because the costs haven’t come down, maybe diesel has come down a little bit, but other prices are still high,” he says.
In Klaipėda, people were also queuing to express solidarity with protesting farmers and get some free milk.
“We have about three tonnes in total,” says Karolis Gečas, a farmer from Šilalė, adding he was surprised by how many people showed up.
“Of course I support the farmers, they are working, toiling, and it’s terrible to be so underappreciated,” says one.
Others, meanwhile, admit that they are more interested in fresh milk: “I’m willing to pay and get a natural product for the children that is not from a shop.”
Professor Astrida Miceikienė of Vytautas Magnus University says that milk prices are unlikely to rise any time soon, and that all sides will suffer during such a protest action.
“The top people in government should have already sat down and looked for solutions,” she says, adding that unless farmers and processors agree, Lithuania risks losing export markets.
“Lithuania is still one of the countries that export milk. We can lose our good reputation for the production of high quality products and exports may be affected,” says Miceikienė.
The president’s advisers have also heard the farmers’ woes. Farmers were promised assistance, particularly small family-run farms.
“Such farms, which believed in the business, cannot survive anymore, so the first thing for such farmers must be interest-free loans, short-term credit,” says Vytautas Buivydas, vice chairman of the Family Farmers Association.
Dairy processors say that only about half of milk produced in Lithuania is sold in the domestic market, the rest gets exported. And prices have fallen in Europe.
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