The majority of Irish dairy farmers will have taken a well-earned break over the last 10 days. Aside from winter milking enterprises, cows are dried off and indoors for the next while. The past 12 months hasn’t been a bumper year for milk prices, but it hasn’t been a bad one either.

Throughout 2019, dairy markets found a happy equilibrium between supply and demand, and milk prices were pretty steady for most of the year. Ireland’s membership of the EU has been a major advantage to dairy farmers in recent years.

A flurry of trade deals signed by the European Commission with Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Mexico and Canada is already paying dividends for the European dairy industry.

For 2019, Europe is on course to export more than 4.7m tonnes of dairy products to international markets, which is a phenomenal volume of exports and an all-time record.

Butter

Ireland overtook France in 2019 to become the largest butter exporting country in the EU and is generally in the top five countries for exports of other dairy products such as cheese, milk powder and whey.

With calving 2020 about to get under way on most Irish dairy farms in the next month or so, many farmers will be wondering what dairy markets hold in store for 2020.

Some EU countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands have shown signs of higher milk production in the closing months of 2019.

Despite the rising milk production, European dairy prices closed out 2019 on a real upward curve thanks to soaring demand in export markets, particularly from China and other countries in Southeast Asia.

While European milk production may be on the rise in some large producing regions, the signals from the demand side of the market suggest the initial outlook for milk prices in 2020 is very positive.