Coveney to give reaction to CAP reform proposals at dairy show

AGRICULTURE Minister Simon Coveney will open the National Dairy Show and speak at the Pfizer Animal Health Farming Forum on October 15, in Millstreet, Co Cork.

It will be an early opportunity for the minister to give his reaction to the European Commission’s official proposals for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, which will be published on October 12.

Many Irish farmers have been alarmed by leaked draft versions of the proposals, suggesting a new 2014 basis and a move to a flat rate per hectare for Ireland’s €1.3 billion of farm income support from the EU.

The dairy show and forum will provide an opportunity for farmers to learn from the minister how the commission’s proposals will shape farming in the EU up to 2020.

However, the most challenging milk quota situation for years is likely to be the main preoccupation of dairy farmers at the event.

National Dairy Show organising committee member, Sean McSweeney, revealed at yesterday’s launch that milk supplies to Dairygold Co-op — the main milk processor in the southern counties — are running 8% year-to-date above the permitted quota level, and a cash-flow crisis faces hundreds of suppliers who will not be paid for milk until April 2012 — because processors are deducting to cover the likely EU fine of 28.6c per litre for over-quota milk.

Mr McSweeney called for an EU-wide milk quota, so that expansionist dairy industries in member states like Ireland can fill the supply gap left by countries such as Britain or Slovenia, which fills only about 80% of its annual milk quota.

Mr Coveney has warned that achieving an EU-wide quota poses a significant political challenge. However, Irish dairy farmers say they need an escape valve, if they are to reach his Food Harvest 2020 target of a 50% increase in milk production by 2020, requiring massive expansion on farms over the next nine years.

Dairy breeders at the launch revealed that the generous availability of milk quota in Britain is helping Irish dairy farmers — because buyers from the North are taking hundreds of well-bred dairy cattle which would otherwise only add to over-quota production in the south. Northern buyers are likely to figure strongly in the National Dairy Show sale of top-class young dairy animals.

But the highlight for the breeders will be the Irish Examiner Farming Supreme Dairy Championship — in which a three-time winner is a strong possibility, for only the second time in the event’s long history.

If Laurelmore Ruben Sassy, bred and exhibited by John and Ricky Barrett & Sons, Togher, Cork, repeats her 2009 and 2010 wins, she will be crowned three-in-a-row champion.