Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Are the houses, dwelling house Inc. Or just cattle sheds ect.

You are going fully comp on all your machines. Is it worth it?

Cover for feeds and fert, sfp.

You are not letting much too chance, do anyone think it's a bit excessive.

I suppose if that's the cover you want, you will have to price around

sfp will only be covered up to 15000- which would be the proportion covered from an on farm inspection where deductions were made for cross compliance etc

loss of my own milk is also covered as an extra seperate to bulk tank which cover the dairies and lorry up to 25000

houses are just dwelling houses

2 houses valued at 1300000 combined with 10% contents

ICMSA say that average dairy farmers “coming out” with less than half the minimum hourly wage

In the run-up to the Teagasc National Farm Survey that’s expected to show a serious drop in dairy farmer income in 2023 and with the challenges of this year already fully evident, the President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, has said that the reality of dairy farming in 2024 is that average dairy farmer income is now “well below” the minimum legal hourly wage. He said that the collapse in incomes of those producing the milk that supported Ireland’s most important indigenous industry is a damning indictment of the Government’s stewardship of Irish farming and food and provided a ‘textbook’ example of how to drive a vibrant and healthy multi-billion Euro sector potentially ‘off a cliff’.

Mr. Drennan said that even allowing for the fact that ICMSA would obviously always represent most forcibly the interests of family dairy farms, the ‘wipeout’ of dairy farmer income presided over by the Government and cheered-on by a “blissfully ignorant and insulated class of commentators” was unprecedented and easily verified by the most cursory look at the figures and data.

“We know that the Teagasc National Farm Survey will be published shortly.  Obviously, even at this stage that Survey is going to confirm what we already know; that dairy farmer income has fallen again, and we think will now be coming in under €50,000 for 2023.  But that figure hides the true extent of the disgrace that is dairy farmer income in 2024”, he said.

Mr. Drennan took as an example the average dairy farmer milking 92 cows with each cows producing 6000 litres, giving a total production of 552,000 litres.   Based on a milk price of 43cpl with a production cost of 37cpl, giving a net of just 6 cents per litre, that farm is now earning a total of approximately €33,000 from the milk enterprise out of which that average farmer will have repayments – often linked to requirements to meet ever increasing environmental regulations – of the order of €15,000.   This reduces his/her income to €18,000.

“That €18,000 based on farmers working a 60-hour week represents – to our most skilled farmer supporting a multi-billion Euro sector, the grand total of €5.76 per hour and that includes working Sundays, bank holidays etc.  That’s less than half the minimum hourly wage and is - we need to say this honestly - an absolute disgrace.  This is what our most technical and trained fulltime farmers – the ones on whom our world-famous, flagship food export is built – are coming out with”, said Mr. Drennan.

“There’ll be those who shrug their shoulders at that.   But those people won’t be getting by on four or five hours broken sleep per night for the ten weeks of calving and they are not the ones who are milking cows twice a day, every day, every week. We have no problem calling it for what it is: a disgrace. The hardest working people in the Irish agri sector are ending up with an hourly income that’s well below the minimum hourly rate allowed by the State.    The State and its officials can protest all they like about the ‘support’ they give and their good intentions.   The rest of us – and certainly ICMSA’s farmer-members – have to deal with their actual income; they can’t pay the bank or bills with ministerial intentions.”, he said.

Mr. Drennan repeated his call for Minister McConalogue to convene an All-Sector Farm ‘Summit’ as quickly as possible, so that the collapse in both incomes and confidence right across all sectors of Irish farming can be identified and addressed.

“We are in the throes of a ‘slow-motion’ collapse of our multi-billion Euro farm and food sector and the only response from those officials charged with responsibility is silence.   We have to ‘take the wheel’ and stop this aimless utterly destructive drift that so many seem content with and we have to look at generational renewal as the figures outlined above will not be tolerated by the next generation”, concluded the ICMSA President.

Ends 8 July 2024

Denis Drennan, 086-8389401

President, ICMSA

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office

and straw going to be €30 a 4x4 bale.

Spring barley around here will be about 4/5 bales per acre a tillage neighbour tells me. At €100/acre for chopping that's €20 a bale for the straw plus possibly tedding and rowing up and definitely baling. Add in scarcity and €30 will be very lucky to buy it.

Concrete has to be prepaid for around here

I joined ICMSA this year. They really should email me those press releases. I wouldn't see them only for yourself.

Dairy farmers on half the minimum wage is hardly news but I guess they are trying to make headlines. My drawings are about 20k on average for 80 hour week on average.

good crop of winter barley here and the spring barleys not as bad as I’d have thought it would be. Most around here are chopping as the shite that goes on over straw is annoying. Like pulling teeth. But it’s hard to work without straw bedding. And with silage back there’ll be lots fed. Beet will probably be back up to €80 a tonne too.

You go to my local ifa meeting and it's five minutes is given to dairy and that's just on the commodity report. The rest is beef and tillage. Mostly tillage. But that's the area and the national reps there and they feel pressure from the Grain growers group to try and fill out the meeting.

Those icmsa bulletins are striking a chord. Must be new brooms. It's like they are taking a chord now from the Grain growers group which is no bad thing. Dairy representation has been especially lacking these past few years from our union groups and government. More of the same required from the icmsa and well done on their new tone.

I was chatting to a local dairy farmer over the weekend and he told me that the guy who collects his milk said that there was seven farmers who are quitting this Autumn. He said that five were retiring and the other two was due to ill health. He said that two would be milking around 100 cows, the rest would milk 40-80 cows.

Saddening to see the demise of family farms but I suppose the same thing has happened around EU and the US years ago.

It's a nice article Thanks to the ICMSA. Looks like they tried to get it out before teagasc release the results of their survey and the industry try to manipulate the results in order to recruit more victims. Like the "highly profitable dairy farming" headlines we kept seeing. They did serious damage to dairy farmers imo.

This one of my many favourite lines.

"Drennan said that the “wipeout” of dairy farmer income had been presided over by the government and “cheered-on by a blissfully ignorant and insulated class of commentators."

https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/average-dairy-farmer-income-well-below-minimum-wage-icmsa/

heard of another 2 local herds quitting and two more going from winter to spring milk

future for winter milk is looking like a serious opportunity for anyone who can grow grass and knows how to feed and breed cows- when tirlan reps are ringing to see your expected winter volume and saying that there might be more bonuses available to suppliers with surpluses it shows how bad the situation is- years ago the endless growth in spring milk production meant nearly all year round supply of liquid milk- now the mass exit from both has lead to a serious problem where contracts won’t be filled— nitrates loss of derogation- reduced growth rates between June to August all have shown how vulnerable the spring milk system is

I remember years ago Denis Brosnan saying that Ireland was only big enough for two to three dairy co-op's/processors. That was probably up on forty years ago now. I wonder did he see the demise of the smaller dairy farmer when he said that.

As an aside, we are busy drawing both fleshed and ex dairy cull cows for the past two to three months to the factory. The EURO finals and the fact that the Olympics are in France has added to the demand for cheap processed beef.