Spain: Two dairy farms shut per day in 2018
In 2018, 809 dairy farms closed, which means more than two closures per day. The sector attributes it to the lack of generational change and the low profitability of this production.
In December 2018, there were 13,613 dairy farmers with milk deliveries in Spain, compared to 14,439 in January of the same year. This keeps the downward trend registered over the last few years. At the end of 2017 there were 14,515 farms while in January 2015 the figure was just over 17,000 dairy farms.
However that has not meant a decrease in the production of cow’s milk. On the contrary, deliveries have increased, from 6.7 million tons in 2015 to 6.88 million in 2016, to 7.01 million in 2017 and to 7.11 million tons in 2018; in the last year the rise was 1.4%.
Of the total milk production, 38.5% is produced in Galicia. Then, Castilla y León (12.8% of the total amount), Cataluña (10.4%), Asturias (7.9%) and Andalucía (7.7%) are listed.
The average price of cow’s milk closed 2018 on the downside, standing at 0.330 euros per liter, compared to 0.333 in November 2017 and 0.334 in December 2017.
As regards sheep and goat’s milk, the Ministry of Agriculture has also published the production data for November 2018. Concerning the first, there was a new decline of 3.7% over that one year before. Its average price fell 3.7% in relation to November 2017 to 0.946 euros per liter. The number of farmers also continued to fall, since that month there were 3,212 in relation to 3,462 registered one year before.
Finally, in the case of goat’s milk, production also fell by 7.5%. In addition, the number of farmers fell by 7.3%. On the contrary, the price of this milk rose by 10.4%.
Source: La Razón