This was the resounding issue raised by the IFA this week at its dairy farm income meeting in Carrick-on-Shannon.

IFA dairy chair Sean O’Leary said that ‘’while prices have started to lift, the crisis is far from over’’. He added that the pressure of low milk price, weather, superlevy bills and merchant credit have created a pinch point for many farmers. He said that 2016 has been as bad, if not worse than 2009.

This was echoed by IFA’s dairy executive Catherine Lascurettes, who said that we have now seen a 27-month slump in milk price. She added that this year, due to increased feed costs, bad weather and low constituents, the milk price received by farmers fell below bare production costs of 22.7c/litre for the first half of the year. She emphasised that this excludes labour.

She showed that when a nominal charge of 6c/l is added in for labour, the average cost of production is approximately 30c/l. Based on this estimate, Irish farmers have been producing milk below the cost of production since November 2014. Farmers from the floor voiced major concerns over the 6c/l figure, saying that this went nowhere near covering the true labour cost.

In light of the consistent heavy rain and poor ground conditions, there were several calls from the floor and from the top table for a land reclamation or drain maintenance scheme of some kind to be introduced.

Newly elected chairman of Aurivo, Pat Duffy, outlined some of the supports the co-op has put in place for farmers, including a fixed-milk price scheme. He added Aurivo is currently working on bank packages, which will be announced in the coming weeks.

Listen to an interview with Pat Duffy in our podcast below:

In addition, he said Aurivo has achieved cost reductions of up to €4m across its businesses, some of which stemmed from the consolidation of the liquid milk business and the controversial move of butter manufacturing out of the Achonry site.

Duffy said that Aurivo is currently focusing on adding value to its products. He added that the co-op ceased selling skimmed milk powder into intervention six weeks ago and is now focusing on the production of fat-filled powder at the Ballaghaderreen site once again.

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Dairy markets are much improved but threats remain