Young dairy farmers ‘upbeat’ and set to take advantage of post-quota era

THE FACT that imports make up one in every four litres of milk being sold in Ireland did nothing to dent the upbeat mood of the thousands of young farmers attending yesterday’s Teagasc Moore-park ’11 in Fermoy, Co Cork.

The young farmers were in Fermoy to get technical advice on boosting production. Their expansion plans are built around exporting more dairy product overseas. Thus, they are not too put off by growing competition for domestic liquid milk sales.

News of milk imports reaching 25% was released yesterday by the National Milk Agency (NMA), the statutory regulatory body for the supply of milk for processing for liquid consumption in the State. Almost all of this milk is from Northern Ireland, mostly own brand products in Dunnes, Aldi and Lidl.

NMA chairman Denis Murphy said: “Some registered producers are giving consideration to changing their main business model from a high cost system for the daily supply of milk on an all-year-round basis for processing for liquid consumption on the domestic market to a system of lower cost, seasonal, milk production for manufactured dairy products for export.”

This higher yield approach was also the focus of yesterday’s Teagasc open day.

More than 8,000 people attended Teagasc’s dairy sector open day. Several thousand of these were new entrants to farming, part of the new wave of young dairy farmers hoping to cash in on the post-quota era in 2015, when the EU dismantles its current restrictions on production volumes.

Teagasc’s head of Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation, Dr Pat Dillon, said: “Dairy farmers that plan to expand milk production once milk quotas are abolished [in 2015], must now invest in areas that will increase farm productivity for the longer term; eg: breeding stock, grazing farm infrastructure and milking facilities.”