Dairy chit chat II

Let's say €1m spent on R&D

What's the amount of cash burn?

How much needs to be then spent to bring a new product to market?

How much and how long till said product becomes an icon or brand leader?

Yes, the R & D doesn't produce a single magic product, it delivers a train of products, with the intention of achieving what Buford says above.

Farmers and their Orgs should have always been concerned about what product profile was produced by their processor. The product mix is what always delivers the price to the farmer.
Never in farming or business, just faithfully accept that management/professionals know best. If you are in there and know your stuff, then you tend not to get messed around.
Remember the ghost sugar Rangler. Irish Sugar company were extracting more from beet than they were letting on. A change of tech allowed them to extract sugar from the crowns. Farmers went on strike to achieve a return on that.

rangler1 wrote: »

Does it make any difference, once the milk leaves the yard it's there's to sell as they wish.....

You've hit the nail on the head perhaps inadvertently.

The reason farmers pool milk as a co-operative is precisely because the milk continues to belong to the farmers after it leaves the farm gate. By sharing a milk lorry - in the beginning - or butter production - they can get more for it together than they could individually because of the logistics of delivering from each and every farm.

However - a cooperative is not and never was a Company. It is an endeavour that relies on equity among it's membership, all of whom are tied in together in one area or enterprise. Because they can't choose whether to belong or not , the risks they a co-op is prepared to take and the enterprises it engages in must usually be things upon which all, not just most, of the members can all agree all of the time - anything else is a joint stock company where people are tied in only by the shares they choose to own or to sell as suits their purposes. Co-op members cannot vote with their feet.

Everyone can agree that a shared milk lorry is a good thing. In the old days when butter or cheese was the only game in town probably everyone could agree on those two for dealing with the milk.... but now we have a much more complex scenario where we still have no choice over whom to supply but we are expecting our co-ops (processors) to invest and take risks on new products and new markets to try and get value for the milk. What's more, we are doing so without being able to clearly see what the current product mix is.

Co op members are being addressed - very professionally and at great expense in some cases - by co-op boards as if they were investor relations teams addressing Company shareholders, selling the boards vision of the future of the Company. That is all very well, but co-op members are not the same thing as shareholders.

If I buy plc shares on the back of a corporate plan, and end up dissapointed (or my own risk attitude changes) I can sell some or all of the shares, invest elsewhere, or hedge my risk some other way. Co-op member suppliers do not have the same choice, and for them the consequences are much deeper and potentially the risks more devastating.

And yet we all want the value gain and growth from the processing. We want our boards to act like businesses in the marketplace and like co-operatives when they are handing out milk cheques.

We've come a long way from the shared milk lorry and the skim and I'm not sure we've really figured out the consequences yet.

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Let's say €1m spent on R&D

What's the amount of cash burn?

How much needs to be then spent to bring a new product to market?

How much and how long till said product becomes an icon or brand leader?

Maybe money would be better spent in mergers and acquisitions...the tradition and terroir needed to build a brand has already been done with Irish butter. There's no tradition of cheese making etc in Ireland so why not trawl for smaller companies that seem to have discovered the next big protein drink, or whatever, and buy them?

I was talking with a Co op manager a while back about the fact that nobody wants to milk cows anymore. He reckoned that milk or milk product will be brought in from abroad to manufacture their (our) local cheeses etc...

kowtow wrote: »

Agree on the Irish butter thing - the issue is how to encourage the growth of products which are complementary to that - which encapsulate the Irish family size farm and the cows on it. We know it works, because that's exactly what people are buying when they buy kerrygold.

We have a small but growing Artisinal cheesemaking industry - that should be encouraged because, if it's combined with agritourism etc. it is a way to allow the visitor to Ireland to eat the product of our much loved landscape all year round at home.

And when I say encouraged I don't mean funded, grant aided, shoved through academies or "educated" in innovation - I just mean allowed to flourish, not disadvantaged by over-regulation, or indeed driven to mediocrity by automatically praising every product just because it's made on an Irish farm.

A bit more top level interest in organics I suppose, maybe an "alternative" enclosure for us hippies at Moore Park each year so that there is at least acknowledgement that being industrial scale is not always the recipe for success. That, and a little patience, is all it takes.

We might as well work away at building that culture now - who knows, a couple of air bnb's and a cheese vat might be a better option for some than 472 half jersey cows and buttering up the neighbours Executors.

As for the mainstream and the co-ops - perhaps a talking shop as Magan suggests is what is needed, but I don't think it should come from co-op boards, processors, ICOS, IFA or any of the usual suspects. Create a "citizens assembly" of dairy farmers and let them call in who they want and ask the questions to their own satisfaction before figuring out what the options might be in the future. It'll be quick - because it'll have to take place between milkings - and unusually for Ireland it'll be cheap because nobody has to lawyer up.

Peach of a post

rangler1 wrote: »

[/B]

Another Quango.....jobs for the boys, same personalities as on other commitees because most farmers can't be bothered so if we have an interest and put up our hands we're in.All the positions I've held and only had to fight one election....... might even get a levy towards it.
Two years down the line the begrudgers will start and then none'll bother.
Starting to sound like the recession now, we do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result

You should know me well enough by now to know that what I have in mind isn't a quango in any shape or form, I find that sort of waste morally repugnant.

I accept that we have a great track record of creating them here.

Jaysus. Is that a late spring calver or an early Autumn one?

Mooooo wrote: »

No specific bull pen here but have one slated pen left. Put locking barriers in it and then welded a bar a foot or so above the barrier and gate into the next pen so they can't jump it. Worked so far with maiden heifers next to them

Four years ago had a pen of bulls next to a pen of heifers in the slats and a bull must have laid down and edged out under the barrier to the pen of heifers. Went to sleep in hell and woke up in heaven. Only discovered it when vaccinating the heifers in March. Injected all with estrumate. Had a knock on effect in that six weeks later when AI'ing all that pen came bulling together over a couple of days.

Brown Podzol wrote: »

Four years ago had a pen of bulls next to a pen of heifers in the slats and a bull must have laid down and edged out under the barrier to the pen of heifers. Went to sleep in hell and woke up in heaven. Only discovered it when vaccinating the heifers in March. Injected all with estrumate. Had a knock on effect in that six weeks later when AI'ing all that pen came bulling together over a couple of days.

A bit like slipping into the wrong tent kinda by accident on purpose

God be with the days