The shelves with milk in the Jumbo stores have been sparsely filled lately. According to the supermarket group, this is due to delivery problems. But according to the dairy farmers, something completely different is going on. “Empty shelves almost always involve price negotiations with the supplier,” says Jos Verstraten, farmer and board member at LTO (Dutch Farmers Association).
Dairy farmers have recently received around fifty cents for a litre of milk. At first it was 35 cents. “That’s a nice increase, but it’s not enough,” says dairy farmer Lisette van Oosterhout.
Expensive Product
Jos Verstraten outlines a problem. “Across the board, products are becoming more expensive. Consumers will therefore take a critical look at where they are going to do their shopping,” he explains. “In the past, we have often had milk that was a lot more expensive. In those cases, the supermarket took the temporary loss on the profit and compensated for that by taking a little more profit on other products.”
Meanwhile, the prices of most products that are in the supermarket are rising. “Supermarkets are still trying to put products on the market at the lowest possible price.”
Negotiations
But according to Verstraten, the dairy farmers then get tangled up. They feel that they don’t get enough money for the milk. “That’s why there are now empty shelves. Just assume that if a shelf is empty or a certain product is not available, it almost always has to do with price negotiations with the supplier.”
According to dairy farmers, these low prices lead to a lot of frustration. “It is quickly said: you now get a higher milk price. What are those farmers whining about? But we have needed the higher milk price for years. We have had a higher cost price and a lower selling price for decades,” says Lisette van Oosterhout.
According to Van Oosterhout, farmers have been receiving 35 cents per litre of milk for decades. Nowadays that is 50 cents, but according to dairy farmers that is not enough. “Our costs have also increased, such as fuel, electricity, concentrated feed, gas and fertiliser. Fertilizer and gas are particularly expensive. We can’t deal with that. The rest of the Netherlands also feels that the contents of their wallets are no longer the same.”
Supermarket Jumbo maintains the situation is due to delivery problems.
Source: Omroep Brabant
Translated by: Shanthi Ramani
