Limerick dairy farmer Peter Cagney and New Zealand dairy farmer Simon Lynskey outline their approach to keeping costs low.
Both Peter and Simon are low-cost producers and are joined on stage by farm consultant with TeamAg, Ashley Primrose.
This session will examine ways farmers can reduce costs in line with falling milk prices.
Market outlook for 2026
With dairy markets continuing their downward trajectory, the impact on milk price has been severe, with further price cuts threatened.
To get to the heart of the matter, Dairy Day has assembled three leading experts to give their thoughts on milk price and market conditions.
As CEO of Kerry Dairy Ireland, Pat Murphy is acutely aware of the importance of milk price to the co-op’s almost 3,000 milk suppliers.
Ornua CEO Conor Galvin is the man at the helm of the largest dairy exporter in Ireland and leads the team running the Kerrygold butter brand.
Both men will be joined by GIRA’s Christophe Lafougere, one of the leading dairy market analysts globally.
Surviving dry summers
Go back 10 years ago and a dry summer was a one year in 10 event, now it’s almost every year. The current solutions revolve around bringing in more feed, which might work well in a high milk price year but what about if milk price is low?
Brendan Horan from Teagasc will outline some early thoughts on investigations into summer fodder crops, current grassland farmer of the year Mike Ahern will explain what he does in a drought scenario while New Zealand farmer Simon Lynskey will outline the Kiwi approach.
International outlook
French dairy farmer Hermjan Darwinkel is coming to Dairy Day to give a flavour of the dairy scene in France.
Originally from the Netherlands, Hermjan and his wife purchased a 50 cow farm near Le Mans in 2001 and have built that to almost 400 cows today.
From his time in the European Dairy Farmers organisation, Hermjan will offer a very good oversight of what is happening in Europe.
Building cheap facilities
Builder and dairy farmer John Mulcahy, owner of Mulcahy Steel Ltd will be joined by Bertie Troy of Grasstec to discuss the costs of farm buildings. Using real-time prices, the pair will outline what the best value is in slurry storage and look at the potential cost savings of building lower roofed cubicle sheds.
Future of the co-op movement
Moves are afoot in the dairy co-op space. From discussions around synergies to talks of take-overs, there is likely to be further consolidation in the sector over the next few years.
To discuss the challenges and opportunities for co-ops, six chairs representing 90% of the milk produced in Ireland will take part in a discussion at Dairy Day.
The chairs are as follows: Pat Clancy, Dairygold; John Murphy, Tirlán; James Tangney, Kerry Dairy Ireland; Vincent O’Donovan, Carbery; Edward Carr, Arrabawn Tipperary and president of ICOS and Raymond Barlow from Aurivo.
