Northern Ireland Milk Price Tracker

I don’t think that for a moment but i do wonder why there doesn’t appear to be any ground swell to change something which would benefit the long term future of your industry and make your processers more efficient.
 

The Agrarian

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northern Ireland
Ok. Here's the story. Northern Ireland farmers have been pretty good at producing winter milk. I don't want an argument about the reasons for that. Post deregulation, that milk was desired by processors in the Republic of Ireland to bring up their winter supply which they lacked. And so they kept money from their southern pool to pay an extra incentive to attract Northern Ireland suppliers to move to them. Litres was the easiest way to do that. And rather than force a payment system change upon Northern Ireland farmers that might have discouraged them from moving, they just ran with the liquid system used up here pre dereg. That forced the Northern Ireland processors to stick with that system too, as to change it might have given winter milk farmers a reason to leave them for the southern poachers.

And so we became stuck. This isn't remotely new. I've listened to presentations like that for the last twenty years.
 

The Agrarian

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northern Ireland
So it is what it is and that’s it ?

I've raised it so many times at meetings, that I feel like a real whinger. It'll obviously take more than me whinging to change it. The management and board don't have the appetite, even though it would be for the long term good, so it will take a lot more members to speak out from the grass roots and call for change. They basically need to speak up and reassure the board that they aren't going to walk off if the change is made. But not everyone will support it, because of the love affair with Holsteins is quite strong. 🙈
 
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Can’t understand why farmers continue to act like turkeys looking forward to Xmas in NI
First of all the graph doesnt start at zero which exaggerates the difference between ni and others. You couldn't slip a fly's toe nail between the ni figures and the uk figures. Carry on boys,more meal, more milk
Screenshot_20200808-221922.jpg
 
Theres only a certain amount of money in the pool. If we get paid differently some will win others will loose . The price of milk will stay the same, stuck somewhere in the 90s.
Exactly. Processors have found the sweet spot. 22 when it’s bad a dizzy 28 when it’s good avg 25 or 26. Cost of production plus a small amount for reinvesting. They are getting plenty of milk why would they pay any more. The only way they pay is when it’s short. But with farmers taking bounce back loans to buy stock to milk cows at cost of production 🙈 that ain’t gonna happen any time soon
 
Probablybut what you class as water has the same contents as standardizes 2 litre jar of full cream supermarket shelf milk
Your processor has dispose of the water and also has to have the tanker space to pick the bloody stuff up. Here our processor has seen a reduction of over 10 % in the amount of milk required to make a ton of cheese. Which means Suddenly the Stainless steel can cope with 10% more milk.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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