Since the beginning of the year, thousands from Via Campesina member organisations have joined protests in Brussels and Strasburg (EU), Madrid, Berlin, Galicia, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, and all across the United States.

La Vía Campesina blames multilateral agencies like the World Trade Organization which favour transnational corporations like Kraft, Nestle, Fonterra with their policies and promote the dismantling of protective barriers for peasants.

This is what Lydia Serra from Via Campesina Europe said in an interview with Real World Radio. Serra highlighted the process of closure of milk farms, which is especially taking place in Europe, since practically all peasant-scale farms are selling below costs of production.

“We´ve managed to put in the agenda of European political institutions the issue of milk production”, said Serra, and denounced the “role played by the WTO in favour of a few big dairy companies”.

“The “agreements” signed in the framework of the WTO establish “a complete deregulation of the market and a path towards total liberalization in 2015”, causing a strong flood on the markets and thus the fall of prices, said Lydia Serra.

Far from reducing production to balance demand what the EU has done is the contrary and right now they are providing again export subsidies, which are some kind of dumping for third countries, said the member of La Via Campesina.

The alternative is to reintroduce public supply management policies, that is a maximum level of production which corresponds to the needs of the domestic consumption. In the EU, the production of milk is the only sector which remains with mechanisms to manage the offer and there is pressure to abandon them.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgustavo/