– This meeting will be a good opportunity to sum up certain activities, but also to talk about them in the context of the future. The Polish dairy sector has changed over the 21 years that the conferences have been organized. We are changing not only in terms of the fact that cooperatives, but also the dairy community, are becoming an increasingly strong accent on the map of the Polish agri-food sector – said Agnieszka Maliszewska during the opening of the conference.
Poland's accession to the EU has changed a lot
As Maliszewska reminds us, the idea of the forum was conceived as her own project over 20 years ago. At that time, when our accession to the European Union was not only an intention, but was already well on our way to achieving this accession with the European Union.
– The first forum, which took place in October, was, I remember, incredibly cold and snowy, and we met in Rajgród. The room was dominated by men for the most part. Now I am glad that we also have a lot of women in the dairy sector and I believe that it is also my small merit that these women are so eager to be in the dairy sector today. Let me remind you that when we started organizing the forum, we wondered and this was the main point of our discussion. Is Poland's accession to the European Union an opportunity or a threat for us from the point of view of our sector – recalls the director of PIM.
– Let's look at how this sector has changed over the years. Of course, the conditions have changed a lot in terms of production and processing. Today we are a very well-developed sector. Today we have huge export opportunities, not only the single market, the EU market, where we sell 70% of our export surpluses, but we are present all over the world – emphasizes Maliszewska.
It is also visible how issues related to cattle breeding have changed over the years. The productivity of cows has increased over the years, but the number of processing plants has decreased, but the quality of these products has also significantly increased.
– So, to sum up a bit, was Poland's accession to the European Union an opportunity or a threat for us? It was definitely a great opportunity for us and we made excellent use of this opportunity as a Polish sector – Maliszewska assures.
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The future of dairy must be based on a strategy for the sector
I am very happy that today we can talk not only in the context of what our sector looks like now, but above all we want to focus on what everything that has happened in recent years will look like in the future.
All the problems that occurred in the dairy industry, i.e. the pandemic period and Russia's aggression against Ukraine and all the things that caused difficulties in our production and our exports, gave rise to starting a discussion on the strategy of the Polish dairy sector.
We often wonder and discuss in our conversations what the government or the European Commission can give us. But in reality, we have not yet clearly articulated what we really expect, what our vision is, what the direction of development of our companies is, what we want it to be, how we want to see the Polish dairy industry in the coming years, in 5, 10, 20 years – said Maliszewska.
Will the Polish dairy industry speak with one voice?
I am very glad that we managed to initiate such a discussion and we started creating a document that we called the development strategy of the Polish dairy sector with all organizations. A big bow to my colleagues from other industry organizations. We managed to sit down at one table, start a discussion on this topic, analyze how we look today as a dairy sector, but also think about how we should look and what we can lose along the way – emphasized the director of PIM.
As Maliszewska pointed out, this would not have been possible without an expert's perspective from the outside. Therefore, an independent CRM company was asked, which is not connected to the government or any capital, to prepare an expert's perspective. This gave a great opportunity to evaluate and discuss how external experts see us, how they perceive our chances for further development.
We know and are aware that the quality of our products is very good, but we must not only think about competing on price and quality, but we must also consider what unique methods, what markets, what unique elements of our production we will find in our Polish dairy sector, which will make us a sector that we will be able to position very high – said Agnieszka Maliszewska.
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