Opening a major IFA conference in Dublin attended by over 400 key
stakeholders in the dairy industry, IFA President John Bryan said that
farmers need to be assured that the structural, policy, processing and
marketing issues required to make profitable expansion happen are being
proactively addressed by the industry.
John Bryan said the welcome optimism in the dairy sector was fuelled by
strong markets, positive long-term global demand forecasts, and a renewed
recognition of the potential of the sector to grow Irish exports and jobs.
“Dairy farmers are ready to deliver significantly more milk after 2015 if it
is profitable for them to do so.  Our challenge now is to make sure there
are solid structures in place, to deal with milk collection, processing,
innovation into higher value products and to market the additional milk.  In
addition, we need Government to ensure that favourable economic, environment
and taxation policy supports are in place at home and in Europe to achieve
the planned growth.”
Mr Bryan reminded the large audience of co-op board members that input costs
were rising and market returns presented an immediate opportunity to
increase the January milk price by at least 1.5c/l.  “Today’s event is about
initiating plans to ensure our industry succeeds. Delivering sustainable,
strong milk prices which allow dairy farmers to secure viable incomes must
be at the core of those plans.”
The IFA Dairy Committee Chairman Kevin Kiersey stressed that, in his
opinion, the cost of expansion had been vastly overstated.  “A significant
degree of profitable expansion can be facilitated at minimal cost on farm
and in processing by optimising existing plants, and I expect to hear today
a unified message from the processing and advisory service on how this is to
be achieved.”
“Farmers will have enough to do to finance on-farm investment. Co-ops, plcs,
Enterprise Ireland and the banking sector must play the significant role in
financing any processing expansion required,” he concluded.