‘Four farmers a day quitting dairy industry’

FOUR farmers are exiting the dairy industry each day, a conference was told in Waterford yesterday.

Dr Seamus Kearney, Teagasc dairy adviser in Dungarvan, said the number of dairy farmers had dropped from 86,300 in 1983, the year milk quotas were introduced, to 23,767 in 2004.

“Roughly 1,400 dairy farmers - or four every day - are exiting the industry each year,” he told nearly 700 farmers at the Teagasc national dairy conference.