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Milk Price- Please read Mod note in post #1

delaval

24/6/16

Recently we saw three posters close their accounts over disagreements in the dairy threads. While there is a lot of frustration and discontent with current milk prices and the processing industry, the recent tendency for dairy threads to become tit-for-tat arguments isn’t tolerable for those not involved.

All farming sectors go through difficult periods and during such times there may need to be changes in how threads are moderated.

Dairy threads are going to be more closely monitored and subject to stricter moderation for a while.

To that end we won’t tolerate baiting of posters, constantly reviving old arguments, posters with agendas or crusading for a cause.

Whether it’s discussion of the business or politics of the dairy or other sectors, we expect civility and tolerance toward each other and other opinions as diversity of opinion is needed as a source of different ways of looking at a situation.

"The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress." - Joseph Joubert

Also please be aware that what you may post as light-hearted banter can be read totally differently by someone adversely affected by the subject matter and evoke a reaction you hadn’t intended.

The ‘Off-Season’ forum, and its anonymous posting, is available for anyone to chat about their situation.

The Mod Team.

I was wondering would it be a help if we posted our milk prices. I would hope that if someone is low that help could be given, on the other hand if high perhaps your tips could help us all.

I would suggest posting your processors base inc Vat for comparison
Post your Nett price for others to help or be helped
I think that solids should be included.
I suggest any seasonal/liquid contract price be excluded or seperated.

I feel that we as farmers do a lot of bitching about processor prices and rightly so IMO. I also feel that we should not worry about it as we can do nothing about base price but we certainly do something about it at farm level.

What do you all think?

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browned

Farmer Ed wrote: »

If their not spring calving their solids can't be great.

Why not?

Farmer Ed

browned wrote: »

Why not?

Highly unlikely that the Polish are calving cows to grass the end of January.

visatorro

talking to an English fella who lost £95000 last year and is losing a pence a litre atm. I always wonder how they keep going. irish farmers go on about how grass is cheap, I wonder how all the by-products from brewing and food industries compare in price. they have a huge "home" liquid milk market which cant seem to save them.
I know dawg and kowtow talk about global markets but I find the English model interesting in that it seems to have a lot going for it but still seems to be chasing its tail.

kevthegaff

Was on a few farms in Poland last year, v interesting on 2 dairy farms how they compared. One milking 30-40 cows all chained up ayr, old man running it while sons(who looked badly hungover on a tuesday:-)) old gear with maize, meal and hay from what I gather were main forages. Traditional bucket machine. Next farm 150-200 cows ayr, new 8 unit parlour with 4 full time workers and boss, cubicle sheds, scrapers, no yards for runoff or slatted tanks. Serious gear for tillage, new 250 hp fendt, manitou,all grown fodder. Cows were high yielding hholsteins, calf pens were heated in winter, -15 when I was there. Serious land could also see lots of beet in fields. Labour I'd say is a fraction of here. Many small men being pushed out, similar to here. No constraints in terms of department compared to here. Many of them were interested in asking about grass based systems from Ireland. Great opportunities out there. People in tat are seemed pretty well off also, w poland

Dawggone

Farmer Ed wrote: »

So is the price of milk decided by the local market or the global market? At the moment it would appear that the farmer in wicklow is 3 cent behind the farmer in Warsaw.

A lot of the rhetoric about harvest 2020 was our comepedtive advantage. Not much good to us if we can't sell the product for a good price.

It's been gone over a thousand times.

The global market sets the ballpark price...the local market influences how much above or below that (global) price.

I'm always going to get a better price than Irish producers because no milk gets processed into commodity products like powder and dumped onto world market/intervention. But the global market sets the ballpark of which I'm playing in. Get it?

The 'competive edge' that #grasstomilk gives to Éire or NZ is fine when world commodities are on an all-time high but the perspective changes when the commodity cycle wanes or declines.

Read Kowtows posts, he explains it much better than I...

Dawggone

Farmer Ed wrote: »

If their not spring calving their solids can't be great.

[Deleted User]

kevthegaff wrote: »

Was on a few farms in Poland last year, v interesting on 2 dairy farms how they compared. One milking 30-40 cows all chained up ayr, old man running it while sons(who looked badly hungover on a tuesday:-)) old gear with maize, meal and hay from what I gather were main forages. Traditional bucket machine. Next farm 150-200 cows ayr, new 8 unit parlour with 4 full time workers and boss, cubicle sheds, scrapers, no yards for runoff or slatted tanks. Serious gear for tillage, new 250 hp fendt, manitou,all grown fodder. Cows were high yielding hholsteins, calf pens were heated in winter, -15 when I was there. Serious land could also see lots of beet in fields. Labour I'd say is a fraction of here. Many small men being pushed out, similar to here. No constraints in terms of department compared to here. Many of them were interested in asking about grass based systems from Ireland. Great opportunities out there. People in tat are seemed pretty well off also, w poland

When Eastern Europe gets its act together and manages its land to the same levels as the west you'll be left with a handful of barley barons and then smaller 'life style' farms. Your payments are decreasing year on year because Brussels has decided to put Western Europe farms to the sword as potential out east is crazy. Farms are getting things like 40% grants to change the kirovets for a fends 900 and a vaddy top down. It's not like we haven't had an over sized piece of the pie for the last few decades.
Mr Putin is pumping money into his ag industry to add another string to the bow as well. Big ag hem is cheerleading 20-20 I think the future may be more 7.5-20 until a proper famine hits and we are let off the leash.

Dawggone

Waffletraktor wrote: »

When Eastern Europe gets its act together and manages its land to the same levels as the west you'll be left with a handful of barley barons and then smaller 'life style' farms. Your payments are decreasing year on year because Brussels has decided to put Western Europe farms to the sword as potential out east is crazy. Farms are getting things like 40% grants to change the kirovets for a fends 900 and a vaddy top down. It's not like we haven't had an over sized piece of the pie for the last few decades.
Mr Putin is pumping money into his ag industry to add another string to the bow as well.

Ain't that the truth.

Some wide/rude awakening on the cards...

[Deleted User]

visatorro wrote: »

talking to an English fella who lost £95000 last year and is losing a pence a litre atm. I always wonder how they keep going. irish farmers go on about how grass is cheap, I wonder how all the by-products from brewing and food industries compare in price. they have a huge "home" liquid milk market which cant seem to save them.
I know dawg and kowtow talk about global markets but I find the English model interesting in that it seems to have a lot going for it but still seems to be chasing its tail.

12% get 20% of the payments, the rest fight over what's left. Great if you get a supermarket contract, I arla and mueller dry much of their milk they just hate each other?

visatorro

Waffletraktor wrote: »

When Eastern Europe gets its act together and manages its land to the same levels as the west you'll be left with a handful of barley barons and then smaller 'life style' farms. Your payments are decreasing year on year because Brussels has decided to put Western Europe farms to the sword as potential out east is crazy. Farms are getting things like 40% grants to change the kirovets for a fends 900 and a vaddy top down. It's not like we haven't had an over sized piece of the pie for the last few decades.
Mr Putin is pumping money into his ag industry to add another string to the bow as well. Big ag hem is cheerleading 20-20 I think the future may be more 7.5-20 until a proper famine hits and we are let off the leash.

kinda frightening really, best put the head back in the sand.

kowtow

visatorro wrote:

talking to an English fella who lost Â£95000 last year and is losing a pence a litre atm. I always wonder how they keep going. irish farmers go on about how grass is cheap, I wonder how all the by-products from brewing and food industries compare in price. they have a huge "home" liquid milk market which cant seem to save them. I know dawg and kowtow talk about global markets but I find the English model interesting in that it seems to have a lot going for it but still seems to be chasing its tail.

I have had a sneaky feeling for some time that the most informative model to study might be the uk model from about 1995. Not the best mind you, but too close to home to ignore. Never understood why it seemed to be ignored in the harvest 2020 analysis.

I bought a uk farm in 1998 which was coming out of dairy... 145 acres of good flattish land nearly all grass. Farmers were enlarging, intensifying and there was a new focus on farm business tenancies. Lots of young guys keen to get on whatever it took and lots of older generations folding the cards rather than upping the tempo.

Plenty of fragmented farms as well, with all the frustrations they bring.

I sold the place a couple of years later, often wish I had held on to it...

There is rightly a great deal of admiration for irish grass and management in the uk... but no matter how much I turn it over in my mind I'm pretty sure that we can't achieve maximum efficiency or the litre volume needed to fund expansion without some degree of feeding, so I reckon a non judgemental look at how farms have evolved over there might teach us the odd thing as well.

[Deleted User]

visatorro wrote: »

kinda frightening really, best put the head back in the sand.

So long as they keep the water clean (Danube etc)of bad chem spills there isn't much to hold back bar the odd extreme summer heat. Manufacturing well, the dirty hazardous side is going to China as they destroy their own environment.
All the Eu has to do is demand the same level of standards in food production we have to abide by and most imports would fall off a cliff. They want to ban glyphosate to stop gm, even though it's in almost every confectionary sweet/cereal/factory mad sauce in modified maize starch/ high sugar fructose syrup which is killing the western world bite by bite.

Farmer Ed

Dawggone wrote: »

??

You abviously haven't read the Gospel according to Teagasc. winter milk is one of the seven deadly sins.
No doubt Irish milk from grass is much better than most of the milk you'll find anywhere. The trouble is apart from kerrygold butter. We are not getting much of a premium for it You are absolutely correct the more milk we turn in to cheap commoditys the lower the overall price will be. I wouldn't be so confident you'll always get a better price than me. I got a bit of a contract today for milk at 60 c. But not from A co op. The point I'm making is geography should no longer be an excuse. If Irish butter can command a premium on the German market. I'm sure other products can also.

kowtow

Its about marginal product.

If you are a uk or French farm producing a million litres for the liquid market at say 32c a litre, how much extra does it cost you to produce another 300k litres to dump on the world as powder?

What matters to Ireland is not the overall cost of production in the uk or the USA, but the cost of those marginal litres* because that is what we compete with.

That's the missing piece which ought to go as a health warning on every headline about Irish COP.

* edit: the cost of those litres will depend heavily on the price of nuts, ultimately making the global powder supply + price a more volatile expression of the feed ratio.

Dawggone

Farmer Ed wrote: »

You abviously haven't read the Gospel according to Teagasc. winter milk is one of the seven deadly sins.
No doubt Irish milk from grass is much better than most of the milk you'll find anywhere. The trouble is apart from kerrygold butter. We are not getting much of a premium for it You are absolutely correct the more milk we turn in to cheap commoditys the lower the overall price will be. I wouldn't be so confident you'll always get a better price than me. I got a bit of a contract today for milk at 60 c. But not from A co op. The point I'm making is geography should no longer be an excuse. If Irish butter can command a premium on the German market. I'm sure other products can also.

Nearly 70 million people that buy a lot of dairy will mean a better milk price for me...unless they develop a taste for milk powder.
I'll wager that my cows spend more time at pasture than yours. So what.
The discussion is about Poland and Eastern Europe.
I'll also wager that cheap fertile land and affordable labour beats cheap Irish grass...how cheap is grass on land at €10k/ac?

Waffle is right. I've an interest in a farm on the banks of the Danube and the potential is massive...

Edit. It always made me laugh when the line about population explosion and feeding the extra mouths was trotted out by the Ag industry.
Start by the banks of the Danube and drive east...for days...and days. And that's just Europe.

yosemitesam1

kowtow wrote: »

Its about marginal product.

If you are a uk or French farm producing a million litres for the liquid market at say 32c a litre, how much extra does it cost you to produce another 300k litres to dump on the world as powder?

Those marginal litres must be under 10c/l if its only extra feed costs being included. Grass is probably worth no more than .7-.75 the price of meal without taking into account the reduced overall output per man

Farmer Ed

Dawggone wrote: »

Nearly 70 million people that buy a lot of dairy will mean a better milk price for me...unless they develop a taste for milk powder.
I'll wager that my cows spend more time at pasture than yours. So what.
The discussion is about Poland and Eastern Europe.
I'll also wager that cheap fertile land and affordable labour beats cheap Irish grass...how cheap is grass on land at €10k/ac?

Waffle is right. I've an interest in a farm on the banks of the Danube and the potential is massive...

Edit. It always made me laugh when the line about population explosion and feeding the extra mouths was trotted out by the Ag industry.
Start by the banks of the Danube and drive east...for days...and days. And that's just Europe.

Then I think both of us are in agreement we shouldn't be making so much powder. If a fool like me can find a niche that pays me 60c for milk. Making powder out of it is a bit of a waste don't you think. I live in a domestic market of 500 m people. Have you heard of this project called the Eu?

rangler1

Farmer Ed wrote: »

Then I think both of us are in agreement we shouldn't be making so much powder. If a fool like me can find a niche that pays me 60c for milk. Making powder out of it is a bit of a waste don't you think. I live in a domestic market of 500 m people. Have you heard of this project called the Eu?

you have to admit that anyone giving 60c ltr for milk at the moment needs to be looking at their costs.....after all milk's just milk

alps

rangler1 wrote: »

you have to admit that anyone giving 60c ltr for milk at the moment needs to be looking at their costs.....after all milk's just milk

Not just milk though...milk produced from happy cows, through the hands of a farmer that loves and cares for them, who live in an area of unrivaled scenic beauty, where they can choose to roam the lush green fields freely, where the air they breathe is crisp and clean, where the composition of the milk is the healthiest you can get anywhere in the world....Produce from God's country....

Milked out

alps wrote: »

rangler1 wrote: »

you have to admit that anyone giving 60c ltr for milk at the moment needs to be looking at their costs.....after all milk's just milk

Not just milk though...milk produced from happy cows, through the hands of a farmer that loves and cares for them, who live in an area of unrivaled scenic beauty, where they can choose to roam the lush green fields freely, where the air they breathe is crisp and clean, where the composition of the milk is the healthiest you can get anywhere in the world....Produce from God's country....

That would be cork alright

Milked out

alps wrote: »

rangler1 wrote: »

you have to admit that anyone giving 60c ltr for milk at the moment needs to be looking at their costs.....after all milk's just milk

Not just milk though...milk produced from happy cows, through the hands of a farmer that loves and cares for them, who live in an area of unrivaled scenic beauty, where they can choose to roam the lush green fields freely, where the air they breathe is crisp and clean, where the composition of the milk is the healthiest you can get anywhere in the world....Produce from God's country....

That would be cork alright

fepper

You should be in advertising industry there alps GREAT AD!!

kevinm177

Dawggone wrote: »

Ain't that the truth.

Some wide/rude awakening on the cards...

Only a few days ago you were talking about the huge opportunity that's coming for people that survive in dairying. Now you have a totally different view.

freedominacup

What's the story with the Kerry CEO?

Farmer Ed

freedominacup wrote: »

What's the story with the Kerry CEO?

Alps is the man for the job.

Farmer Ed

rangler1 wrote: »

you have to admit that anyone giving 60c ltr for milk at the moment needs to be looking at their costs.....after all milk's just milk

Cost is just one element of overall profit. If Mercedes focused totally on costs. They'd make ladas

Buford T. Justice XIX

freedominacup wrote: »

What's the story with the Kerry CEO?

Still Kerry CEO;)

Just not of co-op:pac:

kevthegaff

Was talking to Bro working in Brussels eu, water quality will dictate production going forward, nitrate levels will reduce according how water quality has deteriorated. This will hold back production in this part of the world

mahoney_j

kevthegaff wrote: »

Was talking to Bro working in Brussels eu, water quality will dictate production going forward, nitrate levels will reduce according how water quality has deteriorated. This will hold back production in this part of the world

Already happening Kev ,Dutch herd going to have a massive cut due to phosphates and iirc dwag quoted something like only been allowed spread 145 kg n per he in France

kowtow

rangler1 wrote:

after all milk's just milk

And beef is just beef, and lamb is just food, and with that attitude we deserve to be the unpaid fillers of the world's food dustbins.