<div id="subtitle">Farmers spray milk onto fields across Czech Republic to protest low prices</div><div><p>Farmers sprayed milk onto fields across the Czech Republic on Thursday to protest low prices.</p><p>Agriculture authorities said farmers planned to dump up to 500,000 liters (132,000 gallons) of milk, or 7 percent of their daily production.</p><p>Farmers complain milk prices are too low for them to survive. They receive below six koruna (20 euro cents) for a liter, but they say a fair price would be at least 10 koruna (almost 40 euro cents).</p><p>The chairman of the agriculture chamber, Jan Veleba, has warned that around 40,000 jobs could be lost in the next two years if the situation is not improved.</p><p>Thousands of farmers across the 27-nation EU are facing a financial crunch because of collapsed milk prices and seek more EU help and quotas to artificially drive up milk prices.</p><p>The European Union agreed last week to give the dairy sector an extra euro280 million ($420 million) in special aid, to stave off further protest. The decision also included rules that could limit milk production at a national level to push up prices.</p><p>The EU's farm and rural development budget for next year, which covers milk farmers, is euro52 billion ($78 billion).</p><p>But Czech farmers claim that the help from the EU and the government is not sufficient.</p><p>"We can't afford to face such a situation anymore," farmer Josef Kovar told the CT24 news television. "It's liquidation."</p><p>"We are aware of the difficult situation, the milk producers find themselves in," Agriculture Ministry said in a statement Thursday.</p><p>It, however, said "that such a problematic situation in the milk sector is even worsened by the protests, which in our opinion, can't solve the problem."</p><p>Farmers plan to stage another protest in the capital, Prague, Dec 2.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=62241880&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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