Handouts for dairy farmers.

Reggie.

_Brian wrote: »

Mines ok at 210
Not my wisest decision

Tut tut tut

_Brian

Reggie. wrote: »

Tut tut tut

Yea. Hospital emergency run, at the time I thought it necessary but looking back it was foolish on the extreme.

frazzledhome

_Brian wrote: »

Yea. Hospital emergency run, at the time I thought it necessary but looking back it was foolish on the extreme.

Had you a box on the back?

Reggie.

_Brian wrote: »

Yea. Hospital emergency run, at the time I thought it necessary but looking back it was foolish on the extreme.

In that case....I forgive you Brian

keep going

Dawggone wrote: »

Yes, relentless lobbying on behalf of Irish dairy farmers.
Must be worth €200/300k p.a.
I presume yeez will pay me on receipt of the handout (before you give it to charity!)

who do you think you are,the ifa.learn from take your money up front

kowtow

Dawggone wrote: »

Yes, relentless lobbying on behalf of Irish dairy farmers.
Must be worth €200/300k p.a.
I presume yeez will pay me on receipt of the handout (before you give it to charity!)

We have to pay it?

Can't you just nick it out of the milk cheques like the rest of them?

Dawggone

kowtow wrote: »

We have to pay it?

Can't you just nick it out of the milk cheques like the rest of them?

You're exempt Kow as you got jack.


From now on I'll try and organise a sneaky levy from milk supply, not the cheque as ye mightn't get any cheques next year!

Long Time Lurker

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

keep going

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

lol and thats in either meaning:D

Dawggone

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

At last a post in the spirit of the thread!

The way I see it is that dairy farmers were a protected species in the Irish farming industry for over 30 years. Then last April the market protection was abolished with the inevitable drop in price...
So someone had to pay for Xmas.

ganmo

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

Farmers are either factory farms or not worth keeping?
We can't win either way

_Brian

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

Sure.
Abandon farming altogether. And sink the Agrifood industry with it's tens of thousands of related jobs and maybe €10bn in exports annually.

And then where is your subsidised food to come from. Farms work at a loss, existing on direct payments so Europe has a stable secure cheap food supply.

Capercaillie

Didn't think it would take until page 5 for the row to start.

kowtow

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

Those are admirable and quite logical sentiments, but when push comes to shove you can't eat market & taxation theory.

Have you considered whether it might be better to abandon all subsidies and stop political interference in the food markets, and simply let farmers get on with the job they are good at?

The public would have to decide whether they favour apparently cheap processed food of minimal quality from multi-nationals without the security & quality of local production, or food at a reasonable price and high quality primarily bought locally and in season.

Simple as that.

Milked out

Dawggone wrote: »

At last a post in the spirit of the thread!

The way I see it is that dairy farmers were a protected species in the Irish farming industry for over 30 years. Then last April the market protection was abolished with the inevitable drop in price...
So someone had to pay for Xmas.

Do you think the price wouldn't have dropped if quota remained in place? I think it would, what quota removal may do is delay recovery as those that were held back could increase production, me included, at rel. little extra cost and preventing production from slowing down at its normal pace. That's aside from the external factors around the world political and otherwise

Dawggone

Milked out wrote: »

Do you think the price wouldn't have dropped if quota remained in place? I think it would, what quota removal may do is delay recovery as those that were held back could increase production, me included, at rel. little extra cost and preventing production from slowing down at its normal pace. That's aside from the external factors around the world political and otherwise

Of course you're right, quota removal had nothing to do with price, but it makes for good telling!
The point I'm trying to make is why do dairy farmers get a ski holiday and other farmers don't?

hurling_lad

Dawggone wrote: »

At last a post in the spirit of the thread!

The way I see it is that dairy farmers were a protected species in the Irish farming industry for over 30 years. Then last April the market protection was abolished with the inevitable drop in price...
So someone had to pay for Xmas.

Who was protecting dairy farmers back in 2009?

Dawggone

kowtow wrote: »

The public would have to decide whether they favour apparently cheap processed food of minimal quality from multi-nationals without the security & quality of local production, or food at a reasonable price and high quality primarily bought locally and in season.

.

I've a lingering doubt in the back of my head, that after two generations of processed rubbish being fed to our children, that choice may not go our way...

mf240

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

I think there is merit in some of what you say.

The fact of the matter is there will always be a need for food . And if subsidies are removed it may get more expensive. Forestry and overgrown fields are grand to look at but you cant eat them.

Farmers are also inderectly involved in creating employment for factory workers, lorry drivers , machinery sales men , vets and numerous underachievers in the civil service.

Basically dont give out about farmers with your mouth full.

rangler1

hurling_lad wrote: »

Who was protecting dairy farmers back in 2009?

When you see the other sectors, you should realise that being able to find only one poor year in the last ten is good enough evidence of a protected market.
Competition authority were asleep long before it became an issue with beef processors

Greengrass1

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

Do you like cheap food??
If you don't ill happily take another 20c a litre for my milk
Beef and sheep farmers will happily take another 1€ a kg for there beef and lamb
The fact is these subsidies or grants as you call them keep your food cheap.
It costs everyone in the EU 30c a day.

Sam Kade

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Do you like cheap food??
If you don't ill happily take another 20c a litre for my milk
Beef and sheep farmers will happily take another 1€ a kg for there beef and lamb
The fact is these subsidies or grants as you call them keep your food cheap.
It costs everyone in the EU 30c a day.

Also most of the subsidies go back into the economy.

kowtow

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Do you like cheap food??
If you don't ill happily take another 20c a litre for my milk
Beef and sheep farmers will happily take another 1€ a kg for there beef and lamb
The fact is these subsidies or grants as you call them keep your food cheap.
It costs everyone in the EU 30c a day.

`
As a matter of fact I don't think subsidies "keep his food cheap" at all, particularly as - being a taxpayer - it is his taxes which pay the subsidies.

I think subsidies keep him eating cheap food, which is not quite the same thing.

And not good for either the poster, or the farmer.

hurling_lad

rangler1 wrote: »

When you see the other sectors, you should realise that being able to find only one poor year in the last ten is good enough evidence of a protected market.
Competition authority were asleep long before it became an issue with beef processors

I would have expected no poor year in a 'protected market'.

Milk prices have been driven up in recent years by global demand, nothing to do with market protection.

rangler1

hurling_lad wrote: »

I would have expected no poor year in a 'protected market'.

Milk prices have been driven up in recent years by global demand, nothing else.

So the fact that no one was able to compete against you has nothing got to do with it....come on, do you know why high prices cure high prices, high prices encourage expansion/ new entrants,.... product gets over produced, prices drop.
Market has to be allowed work or everyone gets ripped off.

jaymla627

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Lads as a non farmer who's listened and read about the lack of income from farming and the fact that its heavily subsidised ( some more so than others) is it maybe time that we just stopped fuelling all these unprofitable enterprises with tax payers money and abandon farming altogether. I've yet to speak to a farmer who seems to be making money and when you add any income supplements plus grants for kids going to college and what not, surely there's a good case to just retrain farmers in an industry that they can make a living.

No other industry in the country seems to have such perennial loss makers working in it. There isn't any god given right to remain in an indsurty just because your fore father's were farmers too, well at least not in the world outside of farming. I mean I just can't understand it. Why after years and years or claiming to not be able to make a living would anybody want to remain at that work especially given how hard farmers claim to work..

Africa might be a good case study for you, pretty much subsidy free agri sector, i don't think that policy was working out too good last time I checked, it's a continent that can easily be self-sufficent in food and in fact be major exporter on top of that but crack pot governments/no investment policy's for farming lead to what it is today over large swathes of it

C0N0R

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Do you like cheap food??
If you don't ill happily take another 20c a litre for my milk
Beef and sheep farmers will happily take another 1€ a kg for there beef and lamb
The fact is these subsidies or grants as you call them keep your food cheap.
It costs everyone in the EU 30c a day.

I agree with you, but, if we got paid a fair price for our milk that would only affect liquid milk, none of the surplus which is sold off internationally so would we be any better off?!

ganmo

hurling_lad wrote: »

I would have expected no poor year in a 'protected market'.

Milk prices have been driven up in recent years by global demand, nothing to do with market protection.

what you want is a controlled market where gov sets prices and who produces what

Willfarman

My farming enterprise isn't subsidised at all...

But my land ownership is.
Wouldn't matter a jot if there wasn't a kilo of beef or lamb produced and I grazed donkeys on on thistles..

dairy farmers are only getting the promise of this few bob to quell any bad news press till after the election.
Keep em milking like fup boys.
More gallons thats the way to get make the big bucks with a bad price.. Super shiny Simon is on the blower to Xiamen Ching at the minute flogging pallets of dried milk. He's some man.

hurling_lad

rangler1 wrote: »

So the fact that no one was able to compete against you has nothing got to do with it....come on, do you know why high prices cure high prices, high prices encourage expansion/ new entrants,.... product gets over produced, prices drop.
Market has to be allowed work or everyone gets ripped off.

The market in dairy products is working and has been doing so for a decade or more. The market support mechanism of intervention buying was only used once in that period (in 2009) until August of this year when a relatively small amount of SMP started being bought again.

kowtow

C0N0R wrote: »

I agree with you, but, if we got paid a fair price for our milk that would only affect liquid milk, none of the surplus which is sold off internationally so would we be any better off?!

I'm not sure that there is any sane reason to subsidise production of something in a form which is so unsaleable in the local market that it has to be dessicated and exported into the dumping ground of the world powder market.

It may well be that we have too many dairy farmers, rather than too many small farms. In that sense the EU quota regime may have worked to the great detriment of Irish farming (although to the benefit of many in the short term). Yet another reason why political subsidy and interference rarely achieves what it intends to do.

The future of dairying depends on being able to produce seriously high quality products which people are prepared to pay a premium for, in as local a market as possible.

hurling_lad

kowtow wrote: »

I'm not sure that there is any sane reason to subsidise production of something in a form which is so unsaleable in the local market that it has to be dessicated and exported into the dumping ground of the world powder market.

It may well be that we have too many dairy farmers, rather than too many small farms. In that sense the EU quota regime may have worked to the great detriment of Irish farming (although to the benefit of many in the short term). Yet another reason why political subsidy and interference rarely achieves what it intends to do.

The future of dairying depends on being able to produce seriously high quality products which people are prepared to pay a premium for, in as local a market as possible.

I'm not sure if there is much evidence to support that idea. There has been very little movement in the demand for butter, cheese and other dairy products in developed 'western' countries in recent years. Protein shakes are probably the only exception to this, but they are only ever going to be a low-volume, niche product.

keep going

by coincedence talking to a farmer today milking 60 cows and reckons according to his tallys at the moment he ,ll qualify for income support :eek:

kowtow

hurling_lad wrote: »

I'm not sure if there is much evidence to support that idea. There has been very little movement in the demand for butter, cheese and other dairy products in developed 'western' countries in recent years. Protein shakes are probably the only exception to this, but they are only ever going to be a low-volume, niche product.

The growth figures for premium cheeses are wonderful, particularly in the UK & the US.

On a more commodity level butter has been in rare demand in the US as well in the last year or so.

When I said the future of dairying depends on premium products I wasn't suggesting that it depended on increasing, or even necessarily maintaining the current volume of dairy output. Rather it depends on producing products which sell at a price which reflects the cost of production & the premium values of the product.

These may well be niche, low-volume products but in the great scheme of things we are a niche low volume country!

hurling_lad

Update on these direct aid payments - they are currently showing up in my 'Amounts Due' in the 'Financial Services' section of agfood.ie

rangler1

hurling_lad wrote: »

The market in dairy products is working and has been doing so for a decade or more. The market support mechanism of intervention buying was only used once in that period (in 2009) until August of this year when a relatively small amount of SMP started being bought again.

Easy for production to equal demand when supply is controlled, whatabout when your ''small amount SMP '' comes back on the market or the stuff the GDT is hiding... or are they landspreading that.
And there seems to be no let up in expansion

hurling_lad

rangler1 wrote: »

Easy for production to equal demand when supply is controlled, whatabout when your ''small amount SMP '' comes back on the market or the stuff the GDT is hiding... or are they landspreading that.
And there seems to be no let up in expansion

But supply was only controlled in the EU and even then many EU countries didn't fill their quota. The US and NZ are the biggest dairy exporting countries and there was no limit on how much they supplied into what is a global market.

Yes there is some SMP in intervention and there may be some stockpiling on the NZ side, but the global market is still relatively free, as it has been for years.

atlantic mist

eu is the premium market internationally and they need a premium product produced in harmony with the environment, that is cheap/affordable for consumers

how can this be achieved? we have constrains slightly differing an open free market as we are subsidised to ensure the above occurs

think it has helped processors (look at the size of all of them now) more than farmers as it has driven them down the route on price to covering cost/or not and being able to get away with it as public perception of farmers getting hand outs while they get to sell a higher spec product for a lower price, they just need to have their margin and keep the ball rolling

Capercaillie

atlantic mist wrote: »

eu is the premium market internationally and they need a premium product produced in harmony with the environment, that is cheap/affordable for consumers

Premium product. Yes
In harmony with the environment. Definitely not in this Country.

ganmo

Capercaillie wrote: »

Premium product. Yes
In harmony with the environment. Definitely not in this Country.

It would be less friendly to the environment without the threat of cutting payments

Capercaillie

ganmo wrote: »

It would be less friendly to the environment without the threat of cutting payments

If payments intended to protect the environment were results based, it would improve things immensely.

Timmaay

If direct payments were taken away in the morning it would definitely be to my advantage, alot of very cheap land for me to rent. But equally so it would utterly decimate a large number of farms around here, at a guess only 1 in 4 would survive, tillage and any sort of full time beef/sheep would be the worst hit.

ganmo

Capercaillie wrote: »

If payments intended to protect the environment were results based, it would improve things immensely.

If there were no payments there would be less ditches etc
The payments as they stand are a handy way of enforcing their rules

Capercaillie

ganmo wrote: »

If there were no payments there would be less ditches etc
The payments as they stand are a handy way of enforcing their rules

The way the subsidies were structured led to the more ditches been destroyed!

Miname

Capercaillie wrote: »

The way the subsidies were structured led to the more ditches been destroyed!

I can't wait to hear the reasoning for this.

Deepsouthwest

keep going wrote: »

by coincedence talking to a farmer today milking 60 cows and reckons according to his tallys at the moment he ,ll qualify for income support :eek:

That is a scary prospect. Is he heavily debted? If a guy with 60 cows qualifies for farm assist this yr, then a guy with 100 cows will qualify nxt yr, it's gonna be a rough one lads.

darragh_haven

Deepsouthwest wrote: »

That is a scary prospect. Is he heavily debted? If a guy with 60 cows qualifies for farm assist this yr, then a guy with 100 cows will qualify nxt yr, it's gonna be a rough one lads.

Do you think prices will drop more? I think it's more or less at the bottom but will probably stay at the bottom for a while longer than expected (majority of 2016)

djmc

out of curiosity what level of income do you need to qualify for farm assist and do loan repayments debts count as income

mahoney_j

darragh_haven wrote: »

Do you think prices will drop more? I think it's more or less at the bottom but will probably stay at the bottom for a while longer than expected (majority of 2016)

That be my thinking too ,recovery will come twoards second half of next year or so a fairly prominent man in my local coop tells me

Deepsouthwest

darragh_haven wrote: »

Do you think prices will drop more? I think it's more or less at the bottom but will probably stay at the bottom for a while longer than expected (majority of 2016)

That's pretty much what I think will happen as well. But let's remember 2015 will show a reasonably good price averaged out over the yr, and some lads are already struggling. How will they be with a full yr of a bad price.
Nxt yr will sort the men from the boys.