Northern Ireland Milk Price Tracker

[The Agrarian]

Not saying there isn't something to be learned here. But just checking. You do know that raw milk, butter, powder, bulk cheese are commodities, right? What would you say they've been doing for the last 26 years? Giving them to charity?

 

[yin ewe]

The app and the risk management platfrom behind it, will at least give processors a chance to be able to hit these benchmarks. Milk processors were initially set-up to process milk into, milk, butter, powders, cheese etc. and not be commodity traders. Since the abolishion of the quotas and new tools becoming available processors haven't been given the tools and the training to manage this risk. The easy option is, if they make a loss is to reduce the milk price to compensate for it, so the farmer ends up absorbing all the price shocks in the market.

It's sounds more like a consultancy thingy to help processors with their costs, the price tools are already out there for farmers to see.

 

[Diarmaid Mac Colgáin]

Not saying there isn't something to be learned here. But just checking. You do know that raw milk, butter, powder, bulk cheese are commodities, right? What would you say they've been doing for the last 26 years? Giving them to charity?

Absolutely, fully understand they are all commodities with a value, current and into the future. A lot of investment has gone into making value-added products that bring more revenue to farmers, but they are all priced off the raw and processed Commodities. The companies who buy them need to plan for the future as well as the milk processors. It's also about protecting the value of the porcessed products, for example if yor processor makes cheddar out of your milk and pays you 40c/l for it today. Then your processor has to wait for 9 months for the cheddar to mature and get paid, they are also fully exposed to price risk over that 9 month maturation period. This is what's happening at the moment with record high prices. If in 9 months the cheddar is worth more that 40c/l then it's great but if it's worth 35c/l, and the processor hasn't put anything in place to protect against a price drop, then someone has to pay the difference and currently the only way the Processors are doing that is to reduce the farmer's milk price. If your processor has protection (i.e. risk management) in place then that 5c/l loss doesn't get passed back to the farmer. The same applies to butter, milk powders sitting in warehouses waiting to be sold. If your Processor doesn't have risk management in place they are gambling that the markets are going keep going up.

Over the past few hundred years the porcessors have become more sophsticated in how they process the milk into all kinds of produts but they haven't become sophisticated in how they sell those products and managing the risk around it. For example, orignially the whey produced from cheese was initially dumped, then fed to the swine industry as animal feed and now it's a premium sports nutirition product,

The dairy markets have evolved at lot over the past few years, GDT over 10 years ago, CME along time before that and EEX in 2015. The tools are there for arable farmers to lock in their prices. Concept Dairy is filling this void in the Dairy market for both the farmers and the milk processors.

 

[Mouser]

Some UDF suppliers could be hard to convince to lock in again after the last scheme!

 

[Diarmaid Mac Colgáin]

It's sounds more like a consultancy thingy to help processors with their costs, the price tools are already out there for farmers to see.

We have built a fully cloud based platform to allow farmers and milk processors to lock in real, live prices, that update daily and therefore can be transacted upon. Other tools that are out there are for information only, they don't offer prices that you can actually lock in.

There is a consultancy element to our business, we provide education to milk processors on how to best use all the tools available so that they understand how to better manage their risk and offer more reliable prices back to the farmer.

 

[Diarmaid Mac Colgáin]

Some UDF suppliers could be hard to convince to lock in again after the last scheme!

Don't worry we have plans to offer farmers the ability to lock in a minimum price so you don't lose out if the market rises. I'll out some information in the next few weeks when it's going live. In the meantime any questions give me a shout.

 

[Happy at it]

To what extent do you think you app will help the industry No amount of consultancy or apps will counter the fact that supermarkets have used our products as loss leaders, and it is in their best interests to buy them from processors for as little as possible. Any idea that promotes the fact that they care for the farmers and their cows is a nonsense.

Is it possible for farmers to beat the house when selling a perishable commodity produced daily basis. Would riding the roller coaster work out just the same over a period of time?

 

[Diarmaid Mac Colgáin]

To what extent do you think you app will help the industry No amount of consultancy or apps will counter the fact that supermarkets have used our products as loss leaders, and it is in their best interests to buy them from processors for as little as possible. Any idea that promotes the fact that they care for the farmers and their cows is a nonsense.

Is it possible for farmers to beat the house when selling a perishable commodity produced daily basis. Would riding the roller coaster work out just the same over a period of time?

One thing the app and the risk management platform will bring is price transparency, if you don’t have this then there is no reference price then it’s difficult to argue you have been underpaid. It’s like having a 60 mph speed limit but no one is measuring it, so you don’t know if you are going fast or slow. There is some transparency around the liquid milk but little or none around the cheese that goes into the ready made sandwiches, milk powder that goes into ice cream, mozzarella onto pizza’s etc.

There is a huge drive on sustainability at the moment, everyone is focused on the environmental and social sustainability side but economic sustainability is being ignored. Retailers are under a lot more pressure ensuring that farmers are being paid properly, yes they will always want the lowest price but if there are no farmers then there won’t be any food. Farmers have never been in a stronger position to negotiate. We need to ask the question, “How can farmers going to go green if they are in the red?”, there has to be some financial security and the tools are out there to provide that. We spoke about this at the Department of Trade, "Game Changing Technology for Agriculture 2022" event in London the week before last, here is a short clip;

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1508413603430363150

We’re more focused on managing profitability rather than “beating the house”, that’s the difference between risk management and speculation. Milk is a perishable product but it should not be used as a stick during negotiations, it can be turned into powder and stored for a few years or butter for up to 2 years and cheese up to 18 months depending on the type. Hence farmers investing indirectly (via the milk price) in this processing capacity over the years to have these options. It’s important to have the tools to not have to ride the roller coaster if you don’t want to as only adds to the insecurity and depending on what side you are on how profitable the farm is.

 

[Richy12]

No harm to the craic but please no more about the app on this thread, you have your own thread for it.

I used to like clicking here for Irish lads having a laugh not for getting an app shoved down yer throat.

 

[Agrifool]

Id be interested to know how you can get better prices for farmers when a lot of us are locked into co-ops. We have to supply all our milk to the co-op so how can we sell milk to a higher bidder/alternative buyer?

 

[Davy]

Anyhoooo, some spell of weather

 

[The Agrarian]

Did anyone else's to-do list get very big over the last week?

 

[Conrod96]

Did anyone else's to-do list get very big over the last week?

Very should have had the cows out but not much grass and fences not checked but got the slurry finished the start of the week, 1st half of fert all on, rolling done, ploughing done, dung spread, had good scan on cows and heifers this week. And down to the last 8 cows to calf now

 

[Mouser]

Very should have had the cows out but not much grass and fences not checked but got the slurry finished the start of the week, 1st half of fert all on, rolling done, ploughing done, dung spread, had good scan on cows and heifers this week. And down to the last 8 cows to calf now

Show off!

 

[Conrod96]

Show off!

Many hands make light work in this case

 

[it's not over]

Grass cut in n antrim on Friday and I haven't got the bastxxd of a sower on yet

 

[Cowcorn]

Grass cut in n antrim on Friday and I haven't got the bastxxd of a sower on yet

Look on the bright side , the fert is still in the bag and rising in value !!!
Not spread and you wondering whether the frost at night has killed it stone dead
Very warm days up here but bitterly cold at night .
The grass has stalled and winter could be on the way back
The cursed Covid got me in the end and im only running at about 40 % power atm so everything but the essentials will have to wait .

 

[Diarmaid Mac Colgáin]

No harm to the craic but please no more about the app on this thread, you have your own thread for it.

I used to like clicking here for Irish lads having a laugh not for getting an app shoved down yer throat.

Only trying to help!

 

[yin ewe]

Look on the bright side , the fert is still in the bag and rising in value !!!
Not spread and you wondering whether the frost at night has killed it stone dead
Very warm days up here but bitterly cold at night .
The grass has stalled and winter could be on the way back
The cursed Covid got me in the end and im only running at about 40 % power atm so everything but the essentials will have to wait .

I run at little more than 40% most of the time.
Talk of -4 over the next few nights should cool things down. Fertiliser not doing any harm sitting in the bag for a week yet, no point throwing £20 notes about in the snow.

 

[daveydiesel1]

Had red tractor inspection the day. Dunno about the rest of yous but it really gets me uptight. Such a hateful experience even though i couldnt say 1 bad word about the inspector as he was very fair. It really is the scourge of farming