Limerick dairy farmers are ‘up against it' after milk price plummets - ICMSA

LIMERICK farmers are coming under pressure in terms of both falling income – from both market and CAP – and inexorably rising costs for inputs, said the chairperson of ICMSA’s Dairy Committee. 

Noel Murphy said that the year-on-year decline in real terms of CAP and the resultant reduction in direct supports means that “farmers are no longer able to use those as the critical ‘bridge’ to top-up what they were getting from their milk and beef and stay going”. 

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“We now see milk prices falling in tandem with reduced supports and that’s going to put Limerick farmers, who would be amongst the state’s most progressive dairy farmers, under severe pressure. 

“Beef prices are still good but that won’t be enough to stave off a crisis if milk prices fall any further and the budget for CAP is not increased very significantly to cover all claims on it,” said Mr Murphy.

Kerry Dairy Ireland cut milk price for supplies in September by 3c/L while Dairygold  went further with a 3.75c/l reduction.

Mr Murphy said the economic and compulsory environmental costs to produce a litre of milk are the same, but the price the farmer receives has fallen in the last two months. 

“There’s no other sector that can and does experience this kind of precipitous fall in income and it’s exactly this kind of income volatility that is cited by the next generation as the single biggest obstacle to them going into farming. 

“The Government had a chance to incorporate a measure to deal with it in the Budget a fortnight ago but, yet again, decided to ignore the problem,” he said.

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Mr Murphy said the farmer’s margin was an “open book” and freely available to anyone to ascertain. However, he said the retailer’s margin was a different story. “The minister must give the Agri Food Regulator the necessary powers to publicly state ‘who is getting what and for what’.

“Farmers work 365 days a year to produce milk for the consumer and it takes the retailer two hours in a fridge to sell it. 

"There seems to be an unbelievably lop-sided ‘divvy-up’ of the margins when you consider who has done the work involved in getting that milk to the supermarket fridge. Farmers are up against it again and will not be able to take another fall in their prices or income.”