Ranchers who could lose everything due to the Agama situation

This summer, Miquel Vanrell, the owner of the Son Carbó dairy farm (Campos) – the largest in Mallorca with 300 cows per milking – invested almost two million euros in milking machines and a cow shed, with subsidies covering nearly 700,000. However, Agama (which is its only client) has announced that it will stop buying milk in Mallorca next year because "sales have fallen significantly," as Vanrell explained to ARA Baleares.

It is worth remembering that the umpteenth crisis in the dairy sector in Mallorca began in 2023, when Agama announced thatwould reduce milk purchases from Mallorca's dairy farms by 40%.At the time, the company stated that it was making this decision because it had a surplus of 4.5 million liters of milk per year. Therefore, Vanrell expected that "in four or five years" the dairy company would announce that it would no longer purchase milk from Mallorca, but he laments that he didn't expect "it to be so soon." Agama still buys 100% of its production, just over two and a half million per year, for 50 euro cents per liter. For the next three months, the company had agreed to pay him 51 euro cents per liter, as stated in the quarterly contract he has already signed.

However, he admits that he still doesn't know what he will do with the dairy farm after losing his main client. "We are looking at options and closing is one of the many there are," he admits after learning that Agama is no longer committed to buying more milk from 2026 onwards. He believes that this latest time that the dairy sector has suffered reflects that "the agricultural and livestock sector is in a very bad state."

Agama's announcement is not only worrying for farmers, who will have to consider what they do with their farms and also with their facilities, but also for the workers from the same dairy company who don't know what will happen to their future. "We are afraid the company will close," Jesús Ávila, legal representative of the Agama workers, told ARA Baleares.

Furthermore, Ávila points out that the workers learned that Agama will stop buying milk in Mallorca through the press and complaints from farmers. "The company neither informed the RLT nor allowed a real participation process," he denounced. Therefore, the RLT has demanded the "immediate" creation of a table between the Government, the company, and the workers' representatives to negotiate "firm labor guarantees, real protection of local milk purchases with fair prices for farmers, and also the recovery of the company's traditional products," among others.