One of the dilemmas facing farmers is how we get paid for the extra costs of traceability and quality that we consider sets us apart from the rest of the world. In the main, we are ingredient suppliers and while there is nothing wrong with that, it does mean that very well-established brands commanding a special quality premium will see the extra market price returned to the brand owner rather than the farmer/grower.

Over the last while, I have been intrigued to see the Kerry Group succeeding in tying up with a large Chinese corporation while at the same time having infant formula product strongly identified as Irish on each individual consumer pack.

This is a real advance and it will be interesting to see what progress Kerry makes in getting an enhanced price for the raw material. Certainly since the news broke, it is noticeable that the Kerry share price has advanced strongly. Kerry has of course been outstandingly successful in becoming a world leader in high-quality ingredients – and shareholders and the original farmer shareholders have benefited accordingly.

It is worth noting that we now have at least five Irish companies supplying products directly to the Chinese dairy food market – Glanbia, Kerrygold (through the Irish Dairy Board), Kerry Group, Carbery and Dairygold with its de-mineralised whey. Whether this multiplicity of Irish offerings creates confusion in the minds of Chinese customers or distributors I don’t know, but certainly for the size of the Irish dairy industry, it is an unusual development internationally.

Elsewhere on the dairy side, the growth in high-quality speciality cheeses has been an interesting and praiseworthy development but in overall terms, the amount of money involved is still relatively small.

Recently, I dropped in to visit the new Glanbia plant which is producing gluten-free oats for the US market. I must proclaim an interest as I am a contract grower for this crop. Along with eight other growers, we were taken on a tour of the new plant and got a feel for the exceptional level of quality and segregation being exercised in the sowing, growing, combining, transporting and cleaning of the oats.

This is going to a specialist high-price market in the US and the question has to be asked as to how a company like Glanbia, part-owned by farmers, can cater for such a market from so far away, especially taking into consideration the web of bureaucracy surrounding food imports into the US.

Gluten-free foods are becoming big business and anyone that has been to the US will have been struck at how cheap routine, humdrum foods are to buy but how comparatively expensive the fresh and perceived healthy-option foodstuffs are. The Irish product clearly fits into the latter category.

With the spread of GM and the march of corn and soya (maize) ever northwards in the US itself, the US industry seems to find it difficult to cope with niche, speciality markets. Glanbia has invested a lot of money in plant and time in training staff to cope with this opportunity.

If cereal growing is to have a sensible, long-term future in Ireland, it will in my view have to establish the same quality perceptions as already exist in Irish dairy products and beef.

We have done it in the case of our malting barley and we have resigned ourselves to the fact that our climate in general will not allow us produce high-quality bread-making wheat.

It will be interesting, to put it at its mildest, to see how this latest venture succeeds.