Charleville Show puts focus on milk quotas

There were no milk quotas in place when Charleville Agricultural Show was first held in 1979. The EU did not introduce them until five years later.

However, the quotas have now been abolished to open up an exciting era of expansion for milk suppliers.

Charleville Show, which had been held every year without a break since it was founded, is now poised to mark the changed dairy environment with all of the opportunities and challenges that it represents.

Hailed as the premier two-day show in the country it costs €220,000 to stage at a 200-acre site at Pike Cross, beside the main Cork-Limerick road, next Saturday and Sunday.

The organisers, conscious that Charleville is located in the middle of the country’s most intensive milk producing region, have decided to mark the abolition of quotas.

A forum under the auspcies of the Show Society and AIB will be held in the showgrounds on Saturday (2.30pm) to examine how best to maximise the resultant potential benefit for milk producers.

Agricultural journalist Martin Ryan will preside at the event which will have a panel of experts to address the issue and give advice.

The deputy presidents of the two main farming organisations, the IFA and the ICMSA, Tim O’Leary and Pat McCormack, will be among the speakers.

Show chairman Ian Doyle said that with local milk processors having increased their intake capacity, the panel discussion should be very informative.