Milk Price III

first I heard about this.

we would but we’re off the beaten track here. You’d have to know where we are to find us

Its the Inch/North wex advisory area

A whopping €400,000 spent on the refurb of the Inch trading branch I hear,things like that are driving the discontent

Theres 2 in the area being challenged,John o"Hagan looks safe but John Murphy does look shaky

Word locally though is that if John Murphy loses out,John o'Hagan will step down and John murphy will run again for his seat

I've my doubts about that

Kevin Murphy unlike his 1st cousin is currently an active dairy farmer and a good one at that and fairly popular,so has a good chance I suppose?

I dont think it matters which electoral area the chair comes from

Bit of drama anyway and the canvassing on both sides is getting heated

If john murphy loses his council seat,he's off the board of Tirlán aswell as I understand it ?

I’ve heard of a lot of people voting for o’hagan and Kevin

If o’Hagan goes,it might be because he is out canvassing with John Murphy but do ya know there’s a lot more love for John o’Hagan out there than John Murphy

It’s also about having active farmers involved I suppose now that it’s a CoOp for and owned by farmers,people who’d rather have 400k invested in milk price cookie jars than tiles wellingtons will be walking across in the Inch shop

It’s hard to know what to think about the direction of the CoOp when on the one hand we were all told how great it was to have the Glanbia shareholding for years and then at the last vote being told it was basically a millstone that needed replacing with stuff as poorly earning as government bonds

That said,I actually agree with the new direction

Glanbia is no longer the (40%)purchaser or processor of the milk so just an investment now and not a great one,so yes it’s prudent to divest it

That’s one good reason not to be turfing John Murphy out (assuming the part purpose of this coup is to stop the divestiture)

But against that,you need good business people on the Tirlan board so as Glanbia shares sold aren’t wasted down the swanny,there’d be no milk price support cookie jar left

Has there been a bit of that going on? Probably

Thankless task anyway,whoever wins

Hard to understand how NZ with total production of 20billion litres have such an impact on price when total world production is around 700 billion litres..

Most milk is used in local markets not traded international. Not sure of figures but I think its about 10% traded international

New Zealand huge exporter so will effect the price of the product traded, we are obviously very dependent on exports

isn’t bluestone a big issue in California too atm

correct ….

The ‘globalized’ market has served the industrial/distribution agri commodity market brilliantly because it has put all the risk back on farmers. If there’s weather/geopolitical/transport etc problems, it’s all back to us to take the hammering..because they’ll just get the commodity from S.America etc.
So shut up and take the price you’re given!

Dairygold adding more red tape in order to attain the full milk price. I could see this nutrient balance training lead to an A/B price down the line if your nutrient balance isn't low enough.

What hoops do other processors require farmers to jump through to get the full price?

Dairygold now has:

1. Water quality farm inspection.
2. Use all protected urea, can only buy from dairygold.
3. Soil sampling every 3 years instead of 4 (incl 50% biological analysis)
4. Complete nutrient balance training and complete actions to improve it.
5. Milk recording (min 4)
6. Sign up to munster bovine herd health program.
7. Be in the top 50% herd ebi in the coop or be improving ebi better than coop average.
8. Use min 3 star beef bulls.
9. As well as the usual sdas requirement and all the milk quality thresholds being met (tbc, scc, thd, lactose, inhibs, sed).