Development of Dairy production in Ireland

jonniebgood1

Ireland in recent decades has been renowned for its agricultural production. Productivity has increased, farm sizes have changed but it still is one of our most important industries. There are not to many areas of the country that are without some of the relics of the past that all played a part in this, i.e. old creamery sites, abandoned milk parlours, old collection vehicles, churns, etc. Recently I was lucky enough to have a tour of a modern creamery facility that was shut last year despite it being full of up to date equipment and drying facilities. In this thread I hope to look at where the dairy industry has come from, how it developed up until we joined the EU.

So by dairy I suppose I mean Milk, butter, cheese and cream. Butter was produced on farms but also exported in the 1700's.

Butter was Ireland’s most important agricultural export in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
(Solar, 1990). Cork’s butter market, established in 1769, acted as a natural export outlet to destinations as diverse as
Portugal and Australia, while Tipperary town’s public butter market became the second largest in Ireland by the midnineteenth
century (Donnelly, 1971). http://www.ucd.ie/gsi/pdf/29-1/creamery.pdf

Was Milk also exported as early as this? Cheese? Was it sold to many Irish farmers and labourers or did they produce their own>
I think this will inevitably lead us to the co-op movement so any links or information that fill in the blanks is appreciated.

jonniebgood1

Milk history according to the dairy board.

From the beginning, Ireland was endowed with all of the natural advantages for dairying – good soil, mild climate under the influence of the Gulf Stream, moisture bearing south westerly winds and so on. Solinus, a third century writer could, therefore, remark “Ireland has such excellent pastures that cattle there are brought to the danger of their lives by overfeeding except now and then they are driven out of the field”.

Under the Brehon Laws, one of the earliest codified legal systems, a divorced woman was entitled to one sixth of the produce of the churn after her husband had left her. Dairy products have often been referred to in Irish folklore and one version of the epic “Cattle raid at Cooley” reveals that Queen Maeve of Connaught was mortally wounded by a skim milk cheese flung from the sling of her nephew. Another legend tells of an attempt made to kill Saint Patrick with a poisoned cheese!

Later records, especially the English State papers dealing with Ireland, have much to say about cattle raiding as a method of internal warfare. Not only did a successful cattle raid lower the status of the owner whose cows were taken but it also tended to induce immediate submission! Milk and milk products were staple foods and their removal was seen as an important weapon of war.
SEASONALITY
Back in the 16th Century, the seasonality of milk supply in Ireland had far reaching implications, much as it does today. In his book “Irish Food before the Potato”, A. T. Lucas records how Sir George Carew complained about the strength, in military terms, of the Irish “in the summer season … living upon the milk and butter of their kine”. A report sent to the English authorities in 1596 suggested that the best month to attack the Irish was February because in summertime they would have plenty of milk “which is their chiefest food”, but as winter came to an end they were at their most vulnerable.

Records from the 17th Century provide a glimpse of the state of dairying in Ireland at that time. Butter exports, early in the century, were in the region of 1,500 tons per annum and there are references to the product being exported to France. Sir William Petty conducted a survey at that time and he reckoned there were 600,000 cows in the country by mid-century (1.087 million in 2007) and that the yield of an ‘English’ (!) cow was 1,798 kg per annum (4,822 kg in 2007). Up to the middle of the 17th Century the character of dairy production in Ireland was more subsistence than commercial. It was only later that butter began to emerge as a significant export item and quickly became the country’s main export commodity. http://www.idb.ie/section/HistoryofDairyinginIreland

EXPORT GROWTH
Exports of butter really began to take off in the second half of the 17th Century and this trend lasted right up to and beyond the Act of Union. These were years of great growth in the Irish dairy industry and Professor Lyons in his “History of our dairy Industry” (1959) estimates that milk production towards the end of the 17th Century was in the region of 1,961 million kg per annum (5.23 million metric tonnes in 2007).

So important had the trade become by 1685 that a Government proclamation, noting that butter was “transported in very great quantities to parts beyond the sea, from whence, of all others, it makes the greatest return in monies” sought to regulate the trade and to eliminate abuse.

There is also an interesting statistic:

Many of the dairy producers were small groups of men who hired cows from wealthier farmers. But in time farmer-owned herds came to dominate production. In 1841 the average dairy herd consisted of 5 cows (50 in 2007) but herds varied greatly in size from farmer to farmer, much as they do today.

johnny_doyle

not a topic I'd generally have an interest in but I did come across some of the characters involved in the co-op movement in the early late 1800's/1900's through my interest in WW1 and the Easter Rising.

Robert Anderson was a member of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) and did much to help Horace Plunkett :

http://www.studiesirishreview.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=319&category_id=40&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=5

He was also a member of the Irish Association of Volunteer Training Corps (the home defence unit mentioned in the above article) which was ambushed at the start of the Easter Rising and then involved in the defence of Beggars Bush Barracks. This was the engagement where Frank Browning, President of the Irish Rugby Football Union, was killed.

His son, also a member of the IAOS, was killed early in WW1 :

http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=823376

Anderson helped Professor David Houston set up a lab for testing the various brands of dairy product (some poor quality dairy product was capable of spreading some nasty disease).

Anderson wrote a book about his experiences which is available online

http://oudl.osmania.ac.in/bitstream/handle/OUDL/2182/218604_With_Horace_Plunket_In_Ireland.pdf?sequence=2

which talks about some of the politics, the struggle to keep the IAOS going, how banks operated with the small farmers/creameries etc.

Professor Houston worked with Patrick Pearse at his school and set up a number of courses for women and helped with the establishment of the Irish School of Gardening for Women. This sounds twee in today's society but was groundbreaking work (no puns intended) at the time.

http://www.corkman.ie/news/tribute-to-pioneer-of-the-coop-movement-1814080.html

The IOAS appears to have been keen to get women back into agriculture (citing that milking etc has once been an all women role but had become all male), understood the need for quality and marketing/branding, and appears to have tried to develop the concepts of self help and state aid for dairy production in Ireland.

jonniebgood1

johnny_doyle wrote: »

not a topic I'd generally have an interest in but I did come across some of the characters involved in the co-op movement

Nor many others (interest)!
The main character behind the co-op movement of course is well known:

Horace Plunkett
The Co-operative Movement, as we know it today (or as we knew it before the large conglomerates came on the scene), owes its origin to Sir Horace Plunkett. He was born in England in 1854, the son of Lord Dunsany, a wealthy land owner from Co. Meath. After some ten years ranching in America, he returned to Ireland in 1888. He worked for a time with the Congested Districts Board, which had been set up to provide relief for the farming community. Plunkett's contacts with farmers convinced him that the only way to improve Irish agriculture was through co-operation. What he proposed was a kind of self-help. At the time, Irish agriculture was facing severe competition in the British market, brought about by cheaper freight rates from America and the colonies. In addition, the opening of railways in Ireland brought Irish industry under pressure from the mass-produced output of Britain's industrial revolution. http://www.birdhilltidytowns.ie/birdhill_co-op_creamery.html

The first few decades of the Co-op saw them take a much broader role than many would recognise now with links to the homestead movement of improving general living practices and conditions. The Co-ops saw a different type of ownership than that in England and in 20 years they spread everywhere on the island. This piece states that 1 third of co-ops included a creamery:

Horace Plunkett saw in the development of creameries by private concerns a danger of butter-making passing out of the farmer's control. He promoted the idea of co-operative creameries throughout the country and the 'farmer owned and farmer operated' idea drew widespread support. By 1894 more than thirty co-operative creameries were in operation and the central body to organise and service them was founded, namely the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (I.A.O.S.). The aims of the I.A.O.S. and the entire agricultural co-operative movement were summarised in its slogan "Better Farming, Better Business, Better Living." The following decade saw the emergence of a wide variety of co-operative societies, e.g. Poultry Societies, Home Industry, Meat Processing, Horticultural Development, Bee-Keeping and even Turf-cutting.
By 1908, there were over 900 co-operatives (over 1/3 of them creameries) with a membership of over 86,000 and an annual turn-over of about £4 million. A revolution had been caused in rural society, especially by the establishment of the 'creameries,' which became the great focal points for the farming community. So successful was Plunkett in helping Irish agriculture that the government established a department of agriculture in 1899, with Plunkett as its head. Under his prodding, more money was gradually provided to give technical instruction to farmers. Plunkett founded a journal The Irish Homestead to advertise his ideas.
Plunkett taught the Irish farmers an important lesson in self-help - that they must help themselves and not rely on England, if they were to gain prosperity. However, due to the poverty of the country at the turn of the century, the lack of business experience and the dearth of share capital, casualties were numerous among the newly established creameries.

The information taken on Birdhill Creamery can be repeated in many places. The creameries became important centres of activity in local areas, particularly in rural communities where they provided a growing amount of employment. The creamery would often be linked to other trades, shops, hardware stores, etc being sited nearby, even sites for fairs in some cases. I liked the description and imagery here :

The image of the ass and cart or horse and cart trotting lazily in the early morning, bearing the fruit of the family's labours in the cow house, to its destination; the line of carts outside the creamery awaiting their turn to be divested of their burden; the hustle and bustle as the owners squeezed their animal and cart through a maze of 'traffic' in the creamery yard as they edged their way around to refill their churns with separated milk; the exchange of news; the discussions on world events; the friendly banter among 'neighbours' from different parishes and even different counties - especially rich at time of hurling matches - these, alas, are only memories for some of us and mere realms of primitive fantasy for others. We could even tell the time of day at which each farmer passed to the creamery. Questions would be asked if he was earlier or later than his usual time. And one could also recognise the approach of every farmer by the sound of the hooves and the rattle of the tankards. We had a special welcome for some of the passers-by who were not unknown to throw a few sweets our way on their return journey.
The 1960's brought a major change. The horse gradually gave way to the tractor and car. Trailers now filled the creamery yard as the pace of life seemed to be stepped up and there was less time for chat. http://www.birdhilltidytowns.ie/birdhill_co-op_creamery.html

MarchDub

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Nor many others (interest)!

Actually I have an interest but no knowledge of dairy production - so am interested in how the thread develops. As a Dub who eats cheese daily I always wondered why rural people in Ireland - in my experience anyway and open to enlightenment - were never great consumers of cheese. Was it not traditionally produced much? Was it ever a cottage industry the way it was in England? Most modern Irish cheese are copies of imported types.

I have often been asked by foreigners why in Joyce's Uylsses Bloom eats Gorgonzola - an imported Italian cheese, so where was the indigenous Irish cheese production back over 100 years ago?

jonniebgood1

MarchDub wrote: »

Actually I have an interest but no knowledge of dairy production - so am interested in how the thread develops. As a Dub who eats cheese daily I always wondered why rural people in Ireland - in my experience anyway and open to enlightenment - were never great consumers of cheese. Was it not traditionally produced much? Was it ever a cottage industry the way it was in England? Most modern Irish cheese are copies of imported types.

I have often been asked by foreigners why in Joyce's Uylsses Bloom eats Gorgonzola - an imported Italian cheese, so where was the indigenous Irish cheese production back over 100 years ago?

You may see from some other topics that I don't need much encouragement!!! The dairies development has so many elements that I intend to look into and will post.
The cheese comment is a great spot. You have actually nailed with this observation several of the stages that cheese production underwent in the past century. There had been cheese production in Ireland historically but it reduced due to the economic situation in the 19th century and the famine would have reduced it further. The lack of variety of cheeses in the 20th century was also blamed on the co-op movement which developed mass production of cheddar. There has in more recent times been a revival in smaller cheese producers which gives more variety with farm producers having more scope for changing some elements of their product.

Thirty years ago Ireland did not have a living tradition of farmhouse cheesemaking but only a distant history. Due to historical factors, particularly the economic nature of sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland, cheesemaking was one of the many areas of Gaelic tradition that disappeared. It wasn’t until the 1900s that Irish agriculturists began to look at cheesemaking again.

In the 1970s a natural revival of farmhouse cheesemaking began on lands that had been farmed by the same families for generations and on smallholdings bought by people who wanted to escape to the peace of the Irish countryside.http://www.bordbia.ie/aboutfood/farmhousecheese/pages/default.aspx

During the late 1970’s a few enterprising dairy farmers commenced making farmhouse cheese. For at least a quarter of a century before this cheese-making in Ireland had been exclusively confined to large scale factory production mainly concentrating on cheddar production and mainly owned by the dairy cooperatives.http://www.irishcheese.ie/

Some of the food sites have wee nuggets of information on cheese production

Cheese was known as a 'summer food' in ancient Ireland and governed by Brehon Law. Farmhouse cheese-making virtually died out in Ireland until the late 1970s. However, today Ireland produces more farmhouse cheese varieties per capita than any other country in the world.http://www.ndc.ie/food/cheese.asp

So the importance of dairy products was recognised as far back as the brehon laws which is quite amazing.

Milk, cheese and cereals, as well as some vegetables, formed the main part of the diet from Prehistoric Ireland up to the introduction of the potato in the late 16th century. While cheese was widely eaten in Ireland, cheese making had declined considerably in the period following the dissolution of the Irish monasteries in the 12th century. Most cheese was imported from Scotland or England after this time.

The value of dairy in the past is highlighted under Brehon Laws, which stated that a divorced woman was entitled to one sixth of all produce churned after her husband left her. Raiding a person’s cattle herd was seen as a cunning act of warfare, as they could not survive long without the staple foods of milk and milk products. http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/life-society/traditional-irish-cooking/traditional-irish-cooking/dairy/

MarchDub

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Thirty years ago Ireland did not have a living tradition of farmhouse cheesemaking but only a distant history. Due to historical factors, particularly the economic nature of sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland, cheesemaking was one of the many areas of Gaelic tradition that disappeared. It wasn’t until the 1900s that Irish agriculturists began to look at cheesemaking again.

In the 1970s a natural revival of farmhouse cheesemaking began on lands that had been farmed by the same families for generations and on smallholdings bought by people who wanted to escape to the peace of the Irish countryside. The cheeses were first made to satisfy the family desire for more interesting food than was then available

I can remember when I was a child - back before supermarkets - the large grocery shops in Dublin , Home and Colonial, Liptons, and others would have huge slabs of cheese on the counter ready for cutting up for customers. The Irish cheese was always cheddar. For other varieties, any of the blues or soft cheeses, it would be a foreign cheese. And we did import many foreign cheeses. There were even small shops in Dublin that sold only cheese. So there was a market for it.

So seeing as how cheddar is a copy of the original English Cheddar I wonder what indigenous cheese Ireland would have been making back before the industry went into decline in the 16th an 17th centuries.

EXPORT GROWTH
Exports of butter really began to take off in the second half of the 17th Century and this trend lasted right up to and beyond the Act of Union. These were years of great growth in the Irish dairy industry and Professor Lyons in his “History of our dairy Industry” (1959) estimates that milk production towards the end of the 17th Century was in the region of 1,961 million kg per annum (5.23 million metric tonnes in 2007).

And why if butter production was widespread did cheese making take so long to recover or be reestablished?

I know, I eat too much cheese.

pedroeibar1

I’m no expert on this but once had a (very) peripheral involvement in the dairy industry. I always understood that during the 19th c. the smallholder sold the produce of his cow (if he was lucky enough to have one) to raise the cash primarily for rent, butter being his ‘cash crop’. That which remained, the buttermilk, was used for personal consumption. It must have been no accident that the buttermarket developed in Cork, along with a huge beef industry, with a huge Royal Navy base at ‘the Cove of Cork’.
The revival of cheese making in the last few decades was as a result of the EEC/EU milk quota system, where, as dairy herds grew and production methods improved, it became more profitable for a farmer to use the milk in excess of his quota for a cottage industry based on homemade cheese. (The price for milk produced in excess of quota was much reduced.)
Joe McGough was one of the main forces in the growth of the Irish Dairy Board/Bord Bainne see his obit http://www.independent.ie/national-news/big-crowd-mourn-joe-mcgough-195809.html

FWIW, in England, the 1627 will of my direct ancestor has among many items
.........also I geve onto my said wyfe all the joynts poultrey, butter and cheese, fish and flesh as shalbe remayninge in my house or owinge by the butcher at the tyme of my decease..........etc.

(She did quite well too on other bequests, but only on the basis that she remained unmarried.)
Rs
P.

jonniebgood1

Earlier than this I think cheese exports from Ireland were restricted by various acts under Charles I while butter may not have been as controlled. This would lead into the economic reasons mentioned above and possibly contibute to them.

jonniebgood1

Most of the dairy corps have some information on the history of dairy in their area or in general. The Kerrygold site which has the info MD posted has some small bits of background that are interesting:

Back in the 16th Century, the seasonality of milk supply in Ireland had far reaching implications, much as it does today. In his book “Irish Food before the Potato”, A. T. Lucas records how Sir George Carew complained about the strength, in military terms, of the Irish “in the summer season … living upon the milk and butter of their kine”. A report sent to the English authorities in 1596 suggested that the best month to attack the Irish was February because in summertime they would have plenty of milk “which is their chiefest food”, but as winter came to an end they were at their most vulnerable.

Records from the 17th Century provide a glimpse of the state of dairying in Ireland at that time. Butter exports, early in the century, were in the region of 1,500 tons per annum and there are references to the product being exported to France. Sir William Petty conducted a survey at that time and he reckoned there were 600,000 cows in the country by mid-century (1.1 million in 2006) and that the yield of an ‘English’ (!) cow was 1,798 kg per annum (4,759 kg in 2006). Up to the middle of the 17th Century the character of dairy production in Ireland was more subsistence than commercial. It was only later that butter began to emerge as a significant export item and quickly became the country’s main export commodity. http://www.kerrygold.com/intl/index.jsp?1nID=93&pID=94&nID=135

So there was a massive dairy number in the country up to 400 years ago. Before the potato was fully established dairy products had been vital for subsistence.

jonniebgood1

MarchDub wrote: »

EXPORT GROWTH
Exports of butter really began to take off in the second half of the 17th Century and this trend lasted right up to and beyond the Act of Union. These were years of great growth in the Irish dairy industry and Professor Lyons in his “History of our dairy Industry” (1959) estimates that milk production towards the end of the 17th Century was in the region of 1,961 million kg per annum (5.23 million metric tonnes in 2007).

The reason for the surplus in butter was down to the increased adoption in rural Irish diets from the late 17th century. Cork port was the centre of export and the initial demand was from British and Dutch colonies. It was a cottage industry with butter hand made in farmhouse settings, packed into 56 lb barrels and sold for exports at markets in Cork, Limerick and Waterford (Industrial Ireland, Colin Rynne, pg 190). This continued for the most of the 18th and 19th centuries until the centrifugal separators were developed in the 1870s. I think a system of centrifugal separation is still in use today.

jonniebgood1

The Waterford county museum has some background information on the formation of a creamery in Dungarvan. It details the number of creameries as they popped up all over the country in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The first creamery using a mechanical separator in Ireland was set up in 1886. Ireland's earliest creameries were all privately-owned. The first co-operative creamery, owned and run by the farmers which supplied it, was established in Drumcolliher in County Limerick in 1889. The main focus of early creamery formation was the Golden Vale region of East Limerick & West Tipperary, from where it expanded into Kerry, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and then up to the northern counties stretching from Sligo and North Roscommon across to East Derry and West Antrim.

Although Waterford was one of the leading counties in terms of the density of dairy cows, creameries of any kind, and co-operative creameries in particular, were very slow to set up there. The first co-operative creamery in the county was established in Gaultier in 1894, followed in 1895 by one in Ballinamult which subsequently became Knockmeal Co-op. No other co-op was established in the county until Dungarvan in 1920. While there is plenty of documentary information available on co-ops through the Office of the Registrar of Friendly Societies (where co-ops were registered) and the umbrella body for co-operatives, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), there is little overall information on private creameries. However, a national list of all creameries was compiled for a directory which was published in 1908. This showed that, in addition to Gaultier and Knockmeal co-ops, there were 13 private creameries in County Waterford at that time. This compares with 128 creameries each in both Cork and Tipperary, 111 in Limerick and 78 in Kerry (according to the 1906 Agricultural Census). http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/183/2/

MarchDub

I have been trying to find a copy of the above ref on the thread to "Professor Lyons" and his 'History of our Dairy Industry" [1959] that is from the Irish Dairy Board link .

http://www.idb.ie/section/HistoryofDairyinginIreland

These were years of great growth in the Irish dairy industry and Professor Lyons in his “History of our dairy Industry” (1959) estimates that milk production towards the end of the 17th Century was in the region of 1,961 million kg per annum

I take it to refer to F S L Lyons and it must be a research paper and not a book? It would be an interesting read but it doesn't come up under any search - which might indicate it was a paper published in a journal. Anyone any ideas?