After being away from “The Debate” in favor of Melodi Grand Prix, Fredrik Solvang was back as debate leader on Tuesday evening. The topic was food safety in Norway.
Nortura has warned against a long-term egg shortage in Norway. It happens after egg producers were paid in 2023 to stop production.
Tine has to produce yoghurt with German milk powder because the farmers are unable to produce enough Norwegian milk. At the same time, delivery problems have meant that some farmers have been told to pour out milk, and last year the farmers had to pay over NOK 27 million in tax for having produced too much milk.
– But now there is a milk shortage, so what are they doing, Solvang asked the guests from the agricultural cooperative in “The Debate”.
Read also: Tine-grip provokes: They deceive consumers
Also read Gunnar Stavrum’s comment: Relax, you will get enough milk: The farmers cry for their own sick mother
In the “Debate”, Nortura explained that the industry had started to buy Norwegian eggs rather than foreign eggs, thereby creating an egg deficit in Norway, in addition to the fact that egg production abroad was affected by disease.
Read also: Egg shortage across the country: Blame the krona and disease
Will abolish production regulation
Fredrik Solvang pointed out that it is not a food shortage, but an overproduction of food that has led to the biggest scandals in the Norwegian food industry in recent years. He pointed out that a few years ago Nortura dumped Norwegian pork in Ukraine for NOK 10 per kilo, and sold Norwegian sheep meat to Afghanistan at a heavy loss, paid for by the farmers’ own sales tax.
For a long time, Norway produced too much milk. Excess production was sold abroad at a loss, and used to produce Jarlsberg.
Read: Tine spends NOK 750 million to create Jarlsberg in Ireland
Law professor Erling Hjelmeng at the University of Oslo believes it is now time to remove the Norwegian market regulation system, and let free market forces control the production of food products. He believes that the food crises would have been avoided if the responsibility for regulating the market had been spread outwards, through the usual capitalist relationship between supply and demand.
– If you look at the Norwegian market regulation system, all responsibility lies with the regulators. If they are wrong, there will be dramatic consequences for absolutely the entire market. In other markets, the risk is spread in a completely different way, he says.
Was rejected in the Storting
In 2015, Erling Hjelmeng was head of the Market Balancing Committee, which proposed to abolish the role of market regulator, and rather let normal market forces regulate these markets as well. Based on the committee’s recommendations, the government proposed to abolish the market regulation of eggs.
– It did not go through in the Storting, and today we see how the state is in that market, said Hjelmeng in “The Debate”.
He was supported by Frps Sylvi Listhaug, who believes it is high time to drop the production regulation.
– We want to remove the market regulation schemes, said Listhaug, who believes that the current problems with missing Norwegian food products on shop shelves show that the scheme is not working.
– The whole system must be changed so that you get rid of these regulators, she said.
Agriculture Minister Geir Pollestad replied that Norwegian agriculture would not function with free market forces. He believed that production would then be centralized around some areas in Eastern Norway.
– If we were to apply the usual market principles to this, then we would get more imports, it would be more difficult to have agriculture throughout the country, Pollestad said, adding that the market thinking advocated by Listhaug and Hjelmeng runs counter to Norwegian values which must ensure the quality of food production.
Pollestad defended production regulation
Listhaug countered that there is a lot of food that is made in Norway, without it being regulated in the same way as eggs and milk.
– No one feels that there is a shortage of chicken in the shops, which is a production that is outside the “fantastic system” that Pollestad defends, even if it does not work. There is also no shortage of lettuce, cucumber or tomato. Much of it is also produced in Norway, and it turns out perfectly well that you have a market regulator.
– An important difference between chicken, eggs and milk is that we have egg and milk production throughout Norway. Chicken production is centered around slaughterhouses. And that is precisely the consequence of your proposal. We had received agricultural production in parts of the country, but we would not be able to use the resources in the whole country to produce food, and that is what this is about. We could do well with less politics, but then we would have less self-sufficiency, less agriculture in the whole country, and more imports, said Pollestad.
Professor Hjelmeng said that there were other arrangements that could ensure production in Norway. For milk, there is a quota scheme, and Hjelmeng said that the Customs Service will counteract increased imports by scrapping the market regulation scheme. Hjelmeng also said that the dairy farmers must be able to charge a higher price in the market, but that the farmers’ problem today is Tine’s dual role as both market regulator and producer.
– The problem is that Tine’s double role. Tine Industri has some interests. The farmers have other interests. When diesel costs rise for Tine, they lower milk prices for the farmer, Hjelmeng said, pointing out that the farmers do not have room to raise their price in the market, while Tine’s dual role leads to distortions in the competition with the Q dairies and Synnøve Finden.
– Here there were many short circuits at once. If we had not had market regulation, we would have had enormous fluctuations, said leader Bjørn Gimming of the Norwegian Farmers’ Association, who is absolutely not positive about removing market regulation.
2024-02-06 22:39:41
#Fredrik #Solvang #confronted #farmers