The Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA) farm walk and conference in Clonmel focused on the economics and opportunities for organic dairy farming. Currently, there are 28 organic dairy producers in Ireland.

The day started on the farm of Pat Mulrooney, who has been in organic milk production for almost 30 years. His farm is predominantly dairy, with some beef. Pat outlined some of the differences between organic and conventional dairy farming.

Pat says his cows are in the top 10% for milk production per cow, but only average for production per hectare. He needs to keep his stocking rate between 1.4 and 1.6 LU/ha for organic production and, to compensate for the lower stocking rate, Pat gets a higher milk price.

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He is currently getting 60c/litre for his winter milk, but estimates that he has received 47c to 48c per litre across 2014. Pat is milking all year round.

Much of the milk price is driven from the high demand for winter organic milk. As a result, Pat said: “To be in organic milk production, you have to be milking all year round.

“Soil fertility is key. Our soil fertility is relatively low, but stable, and we are limited in the nutrients that we can import into the farm. We mainly import nutrients as straw and concentrates, but also a small quantity of approved forms of phosphate.”

Slurry spreading is the main mechanism to fertilise swards. Pat is also planning to import sludge from a cheese factory next year.

“We use 320 bales of straw each year. This is used to bed the cow over the winter,” he said. Organic milking cows can now be bedded on 4ftx7.5ft cubicles, but 50% of the cows must still be straw-bedded.

Pat said that clover is essential to an organic system as it produces nitrogen which helps the grass to grow.

All Pat’s grazing pastures have white clover mixed with perennial ryegrass. He has also used red clover for silage production.

Stocking rate is critical to the organic system to ensure the farm can home-grow the majority of its feed requirement. Organic dairy concentrate is currently €465/t at 18% crude protein and it has been as high as €600/t. Pat is feeding 1t per cow annually.

“We have our heifers out on B&B at present and I find the drop in stocking rate is allowing us to reduce the need for bought feed – it all depends on soil fertility and how much grass we can grow,” Pat said.

He also said that organic swards are slower to get started in the spring, so he has seen good benefits from closing off paddocks in the autumn.

Pat said that organic dairying has much more paperwork and when animal treatments are used, the withdrawal period is two to three times longer than conventional farming, depending on the treatment used.

Pat likes a strong, robust cow for organic dairy farming. Most of his cows are British Friesian crossed with Montbeliarde, but he now also has some Rotbunt crosses coming into the milking herd.

The group in attendance stated that John Purcell from Good Herdsmen Organic Meats is offering €3/kg for calves less than eight months old that can make 230kg liveweight. The group said that this meat is being used for baby food veal on the continent.

Pat said that mastitis is likely to be higher in an organic system compared with a conventional dairy farm. Last February, Pat installed a milking robot.

The motivation for this investment was, as Pat said: “If I didn’t find a way to reduce my workload, I would have to exit dairy farming.”

In the afternoon, the event moved to Clonmel. Gillian Westbrook from IOFGA gave a talk on the economics of organic farming.

As there are only 28 organic dairy farmers in Ireland, Gillian was unable to present reliable dairy profitability data. Information on the profitability of organic cattle farming in Ireland was presented.

John Liston, an organic dairy farmer, spoke about how he, along with nine other organic dairy farmers, came together to form the Irish Organic Milk Producers Co-operative.

The trading name is The Little Milk Company. The chairman of the group is Pat Mulrooney and Conor Mulhall is the general manager.

Conor explained that the co-operative was set up in April 2013 so that their members could move away from being price takers.

“Our farmers are spread across Munster and Leinster. Currently, the co-operative has a total milk pool of 3 to 3.5 million litres annually,” according to Conor.

Some of this milk pool is sold to other processors seeking organic milk, while The Little Milk Company processes one million litres into cheese.

It has won a number of awards for its cheese, most recently the Bord Bia organic export award 2014.

The Little Milk Company is currently paying its farmers 60c/litre for winter milk and 45c/litre for summer milk.