2% French leave for milk producers
It follows an announcement last
October that French producers up to 170,000 litres (or 37,362 gallons) could exceed their quota by up to 10,000 litres.
The announcement had come as a shock to Irish farmers, given no leeway in their fight to stay within annual quota, which they were exceeding by 0.41% year-to-date at the end of November.
Undershooting their milk quota by 5.1% in the 2010/2011 production year, and sharing the EU-wide 1% annual quota increase in the current year, French farmers have scope to increase production by 6.1% without paying a superlevy fine.
However, from April to October in 2011, they had already increased milk production by 6.9% compared to 12 months previous, according to official Eurostat records.
The milk quota has been utilised almost entirely in France, according to the Dutch Federation of Agriculture and Horticulture’s monthly milk price analysis.
So the announcement by Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries, Rural and Regional Development Bruno Le Maire has come as a surprise. He said the measures will allow farmers take advantage of strong dairy market. It remains to be seen what effect Le Maire’s concession to dairy farmers will have in the French milk quota system, which is the most bureaucratic and complex in the EU. It is administered separately for nine production areas of the country. Last year’s shortfall was blamed on state planning that tied quotas to regions, preventing efficient farmers in Brittany and Normandy from expanding, while quotas went unused in regions such as disadvantaged mountainous areas.
The system gives scope to manoeuvre to milk buyers, and can be tweaked if needs be by the Minister to avoid the superlevy payable if cumulative France milk production exceeds the national quota.
Meanwhile, in Ireland, a repeat of the spring 2011 delivery pattern would probably result in a superlevy fine for going over quota.
Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has warned every milk producer to exercise caution and to seek advice from Teagasc. He said that efforts to secure a soft landing in the lead-up to milk quota abolition continued, and most attention had been focused on a butterfat correction.
“Unfortunately, the commission has consistently resisted attempts to reconsider this issue.”
* The Dutch Federation of Agriculture and Horticulture says the dairy market in Europe is benefiting from measures by French and Irish farmers to rein back milk production. As a result, a 2.1% increase in EU milk has been slowing down.
