Farmers in Vic call for fairer Mercadona supermarket milk prices

Some 150 farmers gathered outside of a Mercadona supermarket in Vic, in central Catalonia, on Friday, to demand fairer milk prices.

A number of tractors cut off traffic on surrounding roads, while some demonstrators dumped manure, water, hay, and milk in front of the store.

According to the Unió de Pagesos farmers' union, it costs 40 cents to produce a liter of milk. Despite this, they are only paid 33 cents per liter.

Friday's protest is the second organized by the Unió de Pagesos and JARC unions since July 27 to demand a change to Mercadona pricing policies.

"An average cow farm that produces around 3,000 liters a day loses 6.22 cents per liter, the equivalent of €5,598 per month," the Unió de Pagesos' Marc Xifra lamented.

This, he argued, has a direct impact on the number of farms that manage to stay afloat: last year there were 430 in Catalonia, far fewer than the 1,633 that existed in 2000 according to his union's figures.