Breakthrough for young dairy entrants

There was broad welcome this week for the changes announced to the Milk Quota Restructuring Scheme by Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh.

Both Macra and IFA welcomed the decision to allow young entrants purchase quota and produce it using their parents milking facilities under formal partnership.

Macra president Seamus Phelan said it would fundamentally transform the entry system into dairy farming. The new arrangements came about as a result of a submission by Macra to the Milk Quota Review Group and an intensive campaign to highlight the proposal, he claimed.

IFA dairy chairman Michael Murphy welcomed this change and also the provision that successors to producers who sell into restructuring will have conditional entitlements to buy back equivalent quota if they later return to milk production.

Both changes, called for by IFA are aimed at retaining young farmers in dairying while also maximizing quota availability by offering a reasonable degree of reassurance to inactive quota holders that their heir will be able to return to dairying should they genuinely decide to do so, he said. "We are pleased that the Minister has finally seen the sense in implementing both.''

He said however that Fischler's Mid Term Review proposals would effectively scuttle any prospect of significant volumes of milk quota becoming available in the 2003 restructuring scheme.

"The reference year for the establishment of dairy premium rights is 31 March 2004, which means few active farmers will sell their quota until after that date,'' he warned. "As a result, the only quota we can be sure of seeing in restructuring in 2003/04 will be what quota has run out of time in temporary leasing, which could be substantially less than the previous year.'

"The Mid Term Review proposals and WTO will force a serious rethink of restructuring in the dairy industry, at producer and processor level. We need to give some serious thought to providing a system after 2004 which will deliver larger amounts of milk quota to small, medium and large committed dairy farmers.''

ICMSA deputy President Jackie Cahill welcomed the decision to leave price unchanged.

The other changes to the Milk Quota Restructuring Scheme announced following last Friday's meeting of the Milk Quota Review Group were:

• temporary Leasing of a producer's entire quota will be confined to one year only

• all recipients of quota under restructuring schemes must meet EU Dairy Hygiene standards

• the category bands for priority allocation of quota were increased. Category 1 is now up to 200,000 litres; category 2 is 200,001 to 300,000 litres and category 3 greater than 300,000 litres

The Minister left the maximum price for restructured quota unchanged at last year's 31c per litre (110p per gallon). 25% of restructured quota will continue to be available to new and recently entered producers.