Milk Price III

K.G.

Alot of guys seem to have plenty leisure time with the amount spent on here/facebook/twitter.quiet simple if you dont want/like work,its time to get out of the milking game because this is where its going.one time if a fella had a hundred cows he never had to touch one but those days are gone

mahoney_j

K.G. wrote: »

Alot of guys seem to have plenty leisure time with the amount spent on here/facebook/twitter.quiet simple if you dont want/like work,its time to get out of the milking game because this is where its going.one time if a fella had a hundred cows he never had to touch one but those days are gone

Lot of lads working smarter tho no harder

Keepgrowing

mahoney_j wrote: »

Lot of lads working smarter tho no harder

Top 2" most important and some times most under used part of the human body

mahoney_j

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Top 2" most important and some times most under used part of the human body

Agree on that ,workload is increasing on most farms tho with more cows and I think a lot are falling down on yard facilities and poor delegation of work ,simple things like proper hanging gates ,a few m of concrete ,good crush and handling facilities etc also use of contractors ,I now do less than 10% of my own slurry ,fertiliser in spring or summer is contracted out unless I've time and it puts another job on the long finger calf de horning mostly contracted I see way too many lads burnt out and turning into cripples ,cant continue

K.G.

mahoney_j wrote: »

Lot of lads working smarter tho no harder

in our area at one time in the late sixties there were 67 suppliers supplying local branch.there is now two yet there is more milk coming out of the area than then .does that mean the two lads are working 33 times harder than long ago

K.G.

mahoney_j wrote: »

Agree on that ,workload is increasing on most farms tho with more cows and I think a lot are falling down on yard facilities and poor delegation of work ,simple things like proper hanging gates ,a few m of concrete ,good crush and handling facilities etc also use of contractors ,I now do less than 10% of my own slurry ,fertiliser in spring or summer is contracted out unless I've time and it puts another job on the long finger calf de horning mostly contracted I see way too many lads burnt out and turning into cripples ,cant continue

the tractor is the big culprit on most farms.

mahoney_j

K.G. wrote: »

the tractor is the big culprit on most farms.

Nope it's the lad behind the wheel ......

kowtow

K.G. wrote: »

in our area at one time in the late sixties there were 67 suppliers supplying local branch.there is now two yet there is more milk coming out of the area than then .does that mean the two lads are working 33 times harder than long ago

And although there are more litres of milk today from two suppliers as there were then from sixty seven, no matter how hard they are working or how well they are farming it's difficult to imagine their litres feeding, clothing, keeping warm and educating several hundred children, building fifty or more farm yards & silage clamps, buying and fuelling a hundred or more tractors etc. etc. etc. as the gallons their predecessors produced must have done one way or another..

And that's without considering the pork and spuds and beef and bits of tillage which those farms would have likely produced alongside milk, not to mention the degree to which families were fed from the farm itself.

I can't think of a microcosm of human, social, or economic life more illustrative of the effects of specialisation & industrialisation than farming, both positive and negative.

At least when there is only one big optimised farm and the minister of agriculture is running it from Brussels, they'll be able to put the rest of us in museums to teach future generations!

K.G.

kowtow wrote: »

And although there are more litres of milk today from two suppliers as there were then from sixty seven, no matter how hard they are working or how well they are farming it's difficult to imagine their litres feeding, clothing, keeping warm and educating several hundred children, building fifty or more farm yards & silage clamps, buying and fuelling a hundred or more tractors etc. etc. etc. as the gallons their predecessors produced must have done one way or another..

And that's without considering the pork and spuds and beef and bits of tillage which those farms would have likely produced alongside milk, not to mention the degree to which families were fed from the farm itself.

I can't think of a microcosm of human, social, or economic life more illustrative of the effects of specialisation & industrialisation than farming, both positive and negative.

At least when there is only one big optimised farm and the minister of agriculture is running it from Brussels, they'll be able to put the rest of us in museums to teach future generations!

If lads think they are working for nothing now, try getting a few bob together back then.money was scarce and people only survived because they spent nothing.a buddy of mine worked in engkand laying cable,in the beginning they were supposed to lay 600m a week but they couldnt get above 300 m for the first six months.when the contract finished 18 months later they were routinely knocking out a km.he moved on but some lads thay stayed at it told him they are now doing 1.5 km anf that with extra regs and h&s.so its not just farming that moves on

Farmer Ed

kowtow wrote: »

And although there are more litres of milk today from two suppliers as there were then from sixty seven, no matter how hard they are working or how well they are farming it's difficult to imagine their litres feeding, clothing, keeping warm and educating several hundred children, building fifty or more farm yards & silage clamps, buying and fuelling a hundred or more tractors etc. etc. etc. as the gallons their predecessors produced must have done one way or another..

And that's without considering the pork and spuds and beef and bits of tillage which those farms would have likely produced alongside milk, not to mention the degree to which families were fed from the farm itself.

I can't think of a microcosm of human, social, or economic life more illustrative of the effects of specialisation & industrialisation than farming, both positive and negative.

At least when there is only one big optimised farm and the minister of agriculture is running it from Brussels, they'll be able to put the rest of us in museums to teach future generations!

That is exactly the point. Has anyone actually sat down and examined the social cost? Ultimately no matter how much faster we run in order to stand still there will come a point when even the most athletic will not be able to run any faster. So what happens then?

visatorro

mahoney_j wrote: »

Lot of lads working smarter tho no harder

Talk of a fella putting in seven robots because he's no help. No says anything about him being a thick bastard that nobody could work for, two sides to alot of stories!!

Agree with you on facilities and using contractors.

kowtow

Farmer Ed wrote: »

That is exactly the point. Has anyone actually sat down and examined the social cost? Ultimately no matter how much faster we run in order to stand still there will come a point when even the most athletic will not be able to run any faster. So what happens then?

Farming is a business like any other, and therefore the market will sort the good from the bad and the better from the best. It will give the consumer what the consumer wants.

The reality which we never, any of us, like to address is that with limited exceptions (Kerrygold being the most obvious) the consumer doesn't actually want Irish milk per se - at least not in anything like the quantities we produce it. The extra 'demand' upon which all our expansion is based is predicated on being able to sell at or close to the cheapest end of the powder market. The consumer we are hoping to sell more milk to wants nothing so much as a bargain, so Irish milk must get cheaper and cheaper (in a global context) means much bigger farms and that means external labour.

If we want family farming to be maintained for social reasons, to support the rural fabric of Ireland - for example - then there are only two routes available to do so.

The first is to look towards the CAP & environmental support and be paid as "stewards" to make up for the loss making nature of the enterprise. I don't believe this works for dairy farmers simply because of the time & capital involved in running a dairy enterprise. Put crudely, if the Government want to pay people to mow the grass and push a few cows around then they might as well be sucklers, because it's cheaper that way and they can work part time.

The second is to produce products which people are willing to pay a premium for where the nature of the land, the community, and the farming itself is inextricably linked to the premium price. In other words, products which can only be produced on Irish family dairy farms. It is this economic rationale (as much as the CAP) which keeps smaller French, German, Austrian & many other dairy industries functioning. It increasingly keeps UK family farms in business as well.

The problem here for Ireland is that our local market is small, compared to the size of our dairy industry, and we have a penchant for top-down planning which is anathema to a truly vibrant local food industry.

Two fairly stark choices, the way I see it.

The third way - the commodity route - is going to require bigger farms and more labour, which was well signaled by the Teagasc reports in both 2011 and this year, although I think it's been played down a little in favour of the "irish family farm" image in the wider press. The interesting question is, if you need 120 cows to pay yourself a decent wage - and part time labour isn't there - so you need a full timer from New Zealand.... how big is big? And with fragmentation is the realistic solution actually two or three separate farms operated by one family with a full timer on each? Anyone who has built up a business from one or two people will tell you that the first full time employee typically makes the founder a little poorer at the end of the year ... with employees as with everything else there is an economy of scale at work.

whelan2

visatorro wrote: »

Talk of a fella putting in seven robots because he's no help. No says anything about him being a thick bastard that nobody could work for, two sides to alot of stories!!

Agree with you on facilities and using contractors.

If its the same lad I'm thinking of he has the parlour operational as well as the robots?

Farmer Ed

whelan2 wrote: »

If its the same lad I'm thinking of he has the parlour operational as well as the robots?

I guess for everyone their priorities are different but 7 robots is a setup for 400 cows plus. Sill a fair bit of management even with the robots and they all have service contracts that need to be paid. So the robots don't provide free labour either. Robots alone plus building and he won't have much change out of a million. If he were to invest that in something like linked finance he would get a return of between 9 and 10% easily. So the question is at what point does a person become a busy fool or worse still a slave? If he was to add up everything he has tied up in that operation. With that kind of money he doesn't need to get out of bed in the morning. However the likelihood is his hip operation may force him to stay in bed.

einn32

Talking to a dairy farmer in Western Australia yesterday. She's fierce worried about contract renewals as the processor has said there will be cuts in numbers of contracts.

Looking at beef as a plan B.

She can't understand why there is such a push for dairy in Ireland as it's so labour intensive! She also couldn't grasp subsidies!

Farmer Ed

http://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/item/11971-milk-fat-prices-soar-as-love-for-butter-spreads-globally looks like fat really is making a comeback. A lot of scientists now changing their minds about it and consumers don't seam to he as worried about using real butter as they were up until recently. Just goes to show its impossible to predict long term market trends.

mf240

There's a wicked shortage of gee in Africa:D:D

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/markets/news/Milk-shortage-cuts-production-of-ghee/3815534-3945634-7trpocz/index.html

Farmer Ed

mf240 wrote: »

There's a wicked shortage of gee in Africa:D:D

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/markets/news/Milk-shortage-cuts-production-of-ghee/3815534-3945634-7trpocz/index.html

There might be light at the end of the tunnel yet. Will this mean the co ops placing more value on the fat content of milk vs protein? There was a time when milk was paid for based on fat only. Are things going full circle?

Buford T. Justice XIX

Farmer Ed wrote: »

There might be light at the end of the tunnel yet. Will this mean the co ops placing more value on the fat content of milk vs protein? There was a time when milk was paid for based on fat only. Are things going full circle?

The huge rise in demand for milk fat is probably driven by the favourable health write ups it's had after findings showing it had more health benefits than veg based spreads. It has taken 2 years to rise from unwanted to favourite and probably still has some upside unless some until other study shows that it's bad for you again.

I was just playing around with the Kerry app and it looks like I have had a rise of just over 9c/l since last year. It would be nice for that price to stay that way for a while.

Farmer Ed

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

The huge rise in demand for milk fat is probably driven by the favourable health write ups it's had after findings showing it had more health benefits than veg based spreads. It has taken 2 years to rise from unwanted to favourite and probably still has some upside unless some until other study shows that it's bad for you again.

I was just playing around with the Kerry app and it looks like I have had a rise of just over 9c/l since last year. It would be nice for that price to stay that way for a while.

I think that's exactly it. But the question is if fat is now returning more than protein. Should that not be reflected in the way our milk is paid for. Ie the weighting for Fat should be increased in value as it is now worth more vs protein? Would be very exciting news if in fact the return to butter is something that will be sustained. This thing has been brewing with a couple of years now. All of a sudden grass fed butter has become almost a health food.

How things can change! Low fat diets are so yesterday!

alps

What are the byproducts of butter production and how are they trending?

Anyone give a stab at the return on a litre of milk if it all went to butter and it's byproduct?

Farmer Ed

alps wrote: »

What are the byproducts of butter production and how are they trending?

Anyone give a stab at the return on a litre of milk if it all went to butter and it's byproduct?

By products of butter would be things like skim milk powder, casein,butter milk powder and lactose. Then there is a whole range of products within those. Arrabawn for example make a product called caseinate for example (if I'm spelling correctly). How you go about pricing that is another story?

Farmer Ed

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin probably one of the reasons for the recovery of butter.

Mulumpy

Caseinate takes approximately 30000 lts of milk to make one ton. Skim milk takes around 9000 lts.

K.G.

Rather than a new dawn for butter it has more to do with the price of smp and 300000 tons in intervention

mahoney_j

Mulumpy wrote: »

Caseinate takes approximately 30000 lts of milk to make one ton. Skim milk takes around 9000 lts.

Spoken like a man in the know !!!!!!

Farmer Ed

Mulumpy wrote: »

Caseinate takes approximately 30000 lts of milk to make one ton. Skim milk takes around 9000 lts.

But then you have whey powder also as a byproduct of the Caseinate. Basically what you are doing is dividing the proteins.

Farmer Ed

K.G. wrote: »

Rather than a new dawn for butter it has more to do with the price of smp and 300000 tons in intervention

There used to be a time when farmers were paid a lot more for their milk relatively speaking that skim was given back to the farmer for animal feed.

If fat is now again worth more than protein. Then is it time to review the way the processors pay for milk and weight the price more in favour of fat rather than protein?

Mulumpy

Farmer Ed wrote:

But then you have whey powder also as a byproduct of the Caseinate. Basically what you are doing is dividing the proteins.

Casein is the protein in the milk. There are numerous types of whey products and byproducts such as acid whey powder, whey protein concentrate and deproteinised whey.

Farmer Ed

Mulumpy wrote: »

Casein is the protein in the milk. There are numerous types of whey products and byproducts such as acid whey powder, whey protein concentrate and deproteinised whey.

They also have a value as they are also proteins. Basically you are just separating the various protein's. I suspect this is done based on what ever is returning the best at any particular time. I suppose the thing that is a game changer at the moment is that the fat content all of a sudden has a much better value than it had up until recently. Not surprising when you think about it as fat was what made milk valuable in the distant past. The biggest butter exchange in the world was once in cork.