Aisling Meehan, an agricultural solicitor and tax consultant brought up on a dairy farm in Clare, presented her report first, entitled ‘Access to land for dairying — new legal and tax models’.
In a post quota environment, land access will become an even bigger issue as farmers will have the opportunity to access quota to produce more milk but not the land.
Aisling stated strongly that the future of Irish agriculture is still the family farm but there are many different ways a family farm can do business.
New operating structures could allow farm owners retain ownership of land but farm it in some type of partnership with someone who has the drive to utilise the land better, potentially making more profit for both parties. This would create a career ladder in farming where a person could build up their own cash reserves and potentially use this to farm on their own some day.
Aisling emphasised that with many elderly farm owners without a successor, a change in the mind set of farm owners to collaborative farming simply has to take place.
She also found that there are few, if any, legal or tax issues preventing people from entering these types of partnerships but that mindset and distrust of such arrangements were the major barrier.
Animal health and expansion
Shane Fitzgerald, who milks over 200 cows near Ballynoe, Conna in East Cork, presented his Nuffield on ‘Animal Health in an Expanding Dairy Industry’.
As Ireland exports a large percentage of its production, Shane highlighted how critical animal health is to both maintaining these export markets and finding new ones in the future.
Having travelled to several countries around the world, Shane realised that in Animal Health Ireland (AHI), Ireland has a world class organisation which has the potential to contribute so much to Irish farmers.
He said: “Industry-funded animal health initiatives are by far the most successful. BVD eradication has the potential to save farmers €100m per year and the CellCheck programme is crucial to improving milk quality. As farmers, we have the most to gain from these initiatives and I believe every farm should contribute to AHI in some way, perhaps through a levy on identification tags, as it us as farmers who would reap the benefits.”
As regards monitoring herd health on farms, Shane would like to see a traffic light system where all herds start on a red light standard.
Once they have an investigation and vaccination programme in place they move to yellow light standard, and once all diseases are proven to be under control they get green light status. This would allow buyers to identify the healthiest herds to buy stock from and encourage everyone to get serious about animal health on their own farms.
He said: “Improving herd health before expansion starts is, firstly, cheaper as you can eradicate the disease in fewer animals. Secondly it will minimise the problems animal health can cause you during expansion which are significant as we have learned on our own farm”.
21st Century Co-ops
David Murphy is milking 100 cows on a 30ha grazing platform near Tallow in Waterford. His Nuffield focused on ‘Dairy Co-ops for the 21st Century’.
Having been elected on the Glanbia advisory board in 2008, David set out to improve his knowledge in co-op function by first doing a corporate governance and food business course in University College Cork and, with his Nuffield scholarship, he has visited some of the most successful milk processing co-ops in the world.
David began by defining a co-op as an organisation owned by its members which operates to return the best possible benefits to those members.
As Ireland exports 90% of its milk products, we need to be able to compete internationally and David found that other co-ops worldwide were way ahead of Ireland in a number of areas. In scale, Ireland has 12 co-ops and four of these process 80% of the national milk pool whereas in countries like Holland, Denmark and New Zealand, one co-op processes this amount of national milk giving it significant scale efficiencies in both processing and marketing.
New Zealand’s largest co-op, Fonterra, processes 17 billion litres of milk annually whereas Ireland’s largest processor Glanbia only processes 1.3 billion litres.
With consolidation of the industry to the point where one processor was processing 80% of Ireland’s milk pool, David believes savings of 2c/l could be easily achievable.
There are a number of worrying trends in Irish co-op structure, such as many co-ops now being 70% owned by dry shareholders.
On his travels, David saw how farmers in other countries had invested from 3c/litre to 16clitre of milk supplied in their co-op and, in Ireland, this is only 1c to 2c/litre, on average.
Nuffield Ireland chairman Bill O’Keeffe gave a brief outline of the purpose and history of the Nuffield scholarships. The programme grants sponsorship to ambitious young people in agriculture to travel around the world researching a particular topic, which is of interest to them and of importance to farming in Ireland. Since the Irish Farmers Journal, FBD and the IFA sponsored Ireland’s first two Nuffield scholars, Padraig Walshe and Jim McCarthy, in 1996, there are now a total of 59 Nuffield scholars in the country. Six new Nuffield scholars were also presented at this conference that will now have 18 months to research their topics before presenting in 2014.
KEY POINTS
With many aging land owners a change to collaborative type farming is essential.Install a traffic light herd health status on Irish farms.Savings of 2c/litre achievable with co-op centralisation.Selling groups can compete with retailer power.Global view of food demand
Amii McKeever, executive secretary of the IFA national pigs and poultry committee, did her Nuffield study on ‘Dominance, Competition and Consumers Demand — the Impact on Meat Protein Produce’. Amii travelled to countries such as Russia, Japan, the USA and also studied Ireland to examine retailer power and the effect this was having on producers.
Amii highlighted the fact that the retailers are getting so big it is giving them considerable market power, allowing them to put processors under pressure, which is inevitably then passed on to producers.
trend
A worrying trend she witnessed in several countries is the emphasis consumers were placing on price when purchasing food. In many countries, consumers have developed this mindset as a result of price wars by retailers using cheap food to drive sales in other sectors. In the USA, studies are showing that for 50% of consumers, price is the number one factor when buying food and, as a result, 70% of food is intensively produced to minimise costs.
While Amii believes retail dominance will continue in Ireland, she would like to see more selling groups to increase the power of individual producers. Competition law in place at EU level is nearly all focused on protecting consumers but, given the unprecedented price pressure on producers, Amii recommended that a competition law for producers should be put in place also.
Leading change in Irish agriculture
Following the Nuffield scholars former ICBF boss Brian Wickham and Glanbia PLC John Moloney gave inspirational speeches.
Leaving a senior management role in New Zealand was a big step for Brian Wickham in 1998 when he took over the role of ICBF Chief. He explained the opportunity to create a new infrastructure of major importance to Irish agriculture as the factor that attracted him to Ireland. At the time cattle breeding in Ireland was in a poor state with the RBI index selecting animals of poorer profitability and several repetitive databases recording different information for the same animal.
Limited funds and facing the unenviable task of uniting the various pedigree breeding organizations did not prevent Brian from achieving his goal. In the initial years ICBF never had more than one year’s funding secured which acted as an extra incentive to Brian and his team to deliver and secure future funding.
His success with ICBF in putting together a national centralized data base continues to contribute extra profit on Irish farms.
Brian put this success down to a number of key factors such as recruiting world class talent and taking established database structures and changing them to suit Irish conditions. He also gained support from farmers such as the dairy discussion groups who assured Brian what he was doing was in the best interest of Irish farmers.
Commenting on what’s possible in animal breeding in the future Brian said he believes, “We have only scratched the surface of what animal breeding can deliver. A 50% increase in production from existing cow numbers would be possible if we keep focusing on EBI and cows with the best fertility and milk solids.”
Leading people
Glanbia boss John Maloney was given the brief ‘Leadership: A personal journey and bringing people with you’. The most recent period of Glanbia has definitely been a watershed as farmers voted with a majority of over 75% in two separate votes to reduce their shareholding in the PLC to 40% for the and also to begin the new joint venture Glanbia Ingredients Ireland Limited (GIIL).
John identified some of the key leadership and management principles he believes are critical to success. He quoted US General and later to be President Dwight Eisenhower with the phrase ‘A plan is nothing, planning is everything’ emphasizing the need to be flexible and yet know where you want to end up and what needs to be done to get there. Bringing talent up through the organization was another key principle which has served John and Glanbia well over the years.
Replying to a question on farmer representatives at board level John said he believed that with all the changes to take place in Irish dairying post 2015, farmers will start to look to the most successful commercial farmers to represent them at board level. He also stressed the importance of young people getting involved in organizations outside the farm gate as part of their own development.
On the Food Harvest 2020 goals for dairy expansion the Glanbia chief believes that if Ireland concentrates on its core strength - utilizing as much tonnage of grazed grass per hectare as possible – then 50% expansion is definitely achievable.
Aisling Meehan, an agricultural solicitor and tax consultant brought up on a dairy farm in Clare, presented her report first, entitled ‘Access to land for dairying — new legal and tax models’.
In a post quota environment, land access will become an even bigger issue as farmers will have the opportunity to access quota to produce more milk but not the land.
Aisling stated strongly that the future of Irish agriculture is still the family farm but there are many different ways a family farm can do business.
New operating structures could allow farm owners retain ownership of land but farm it in some type of partnership with someone who has the drive to utilise the land better, potentially making more profit for both parties. This would create a career ladder in farming where a person could build up their own cash reserves and potentially use this to farm on their own some day.
Aisling emphasised that with many elderly farm owners without a successor, a change in the mind set of farm owners to collaborative farming simply has to take place.
She also found that there are few, if any, legal or tax issues preventing people from entering these types of partnerships but that mindset and distrust of such arrangements were the major barrier.
Animal health and expansion
Shane Fitzgerald, who milks over 200 cows near Ballynoe, Conna in East Cork, presented his Nuffield on ‘Animal Health in an Expanding Dairy Industry’.
As Ireland exports a large percentage of its production, Shane highlighted how critical animal health is to both maintaining these export markets and finding new ones in the future.
Having travelled to several countries around the world, Shane realised that in Animal Health Ireland (AHI), Ireland has a world class organisation which has the potential to contribute so much to Irish farmers.
He said: “Industry-funded animal health initiatives are by far the most successful. BVD eradication has the potential to save farmers €100m per year and the CellCheck programme is crucial to improving milk quality. As farmers, we have the most to gain from these initiatives and I believe every farm should contribute to AHI in some way, perhaps through a levy on identification tags, as it us as farmers who would reap the benefits.”
As regards monitoring herd health on farms, Shane would like to see a traffic light system where all herds start on a red light standard.
Once they have an investigation and vaccination programme in place they move to yellow light standard, and once all diseases are proven to be under control they get green light status. This would allow buyers to identify the healthiest herds to buy stock from and encourage everyone to get serious about animal health on their own farms.
He said: “Improving herd health before expansion starts is, firstly, cheaper as you can eradicate the disease in fewer animals. Secondly it will minimise the problems animal health can cause you during expansion which are significant as we have learned on our own farm”.
21st Century Co-ops
David Murphy is milking 100 cows on a 30ha grazing platform near Tallow in Waterford. His Nuffield focused on ‘Dairy Co-ops for the 21st Century’.
Having been elected on the Glanbia advisory board in 2008, David set out to improve his knowledge in co-op function by first doing a corporate governance and food business course in University College Cork and, with his Nuffield scholarship, he has visited some of the most successful milk processing co-ops in the world.
David began by defining a co-op as an organisation owned by its members which operates to return the best possible benefits to those members.
As Ireland exports 90% of its milk products, we need to be able to compete internationally and David found that other co-ops worldwide were way ahead of Ireland in a number of areas. In scale, Ireland has 12 co-ops and four of these process 80% of the national milk pool whereas in countries like Holland, Denmark and New Zealand, one co-op processes this amount of national milk giving it significant scale efficiencies in both processing and marketing.
New Zealand’s largest co-op, Fonterra, processes 17 billion litres of milk annually whereas Ireland’s largest processor Glanbia only processes 1.3 billion litres.
With consolidation of the industry to the point where one processor was processing 80% of Ireland’s milk pool, David believes savings of 2c/l could be easily achievable.
There are a number of worrying trends in Irish co-op structure, such as many co-ops now being 70% owned by dry shareholders.
On his travels, David saw how farmers in other countries had invested from 3c/litre to 16clitre of milk supplied in their co-op and, in Ireland, this is only 1c to 2c/litre, on average.
Nuffield Ireland chairman Bill O’Keeffe gave a brief outline of the purpose and history of the Nuffield scholarships. The programme grants sponsorship to ambitious young people in agriculture to travel around the world researching a particular topic, which is of interest to them and of importance to farming in Ireland. Since the Irish Farmers Journal, FBD and the IFA sponsored Ireland’s first two Nuffield scholars, Padraig Walshe and Jim McCarthy, in 1996, there are now a total of 59 Nuffield scholars in the country. Six new Nuffield scholars were also presented at this conference that will now have 18 months to research their topics before presenting in 2014.
KEY POINTS
With many aging land owners a change to collaborative type farming is essential.Install a traffic light herd health status on Irish farms.Savings of 2c/litre achievable with co-op centralisation.Selling groups can compete with retailer power.Global view of food demand
Amii McKeever, executive secretary of the IFA national pigs and poultry committee, did her Nuffield study on ‘Dominance, Competition and Consumers Demand — the Impact on Meat Protein Produce’. Amii travelled to countries such as Russia, Japan, the USA and also studied Ireland to examine retailer power and the effect this was having on producers.
Amii highlighted the fact that the retailers are getting so big it is giving them considerable market power, allowing them to put processors under pressure, which is inevitably then passed on to producers.
trend
A worrying trend she witnessed in several countries is the emphasis consumers were placing on price when purchasing food. In many countries, consumers have developed this mindset as a result of price wars by retailers using cheap food to drive sales in other sectors. In the USA, studies are showing that for 50% of consumers, price is the number one factor when buying food and, as a result, 70% of food is intensively produced to minimise costs.
While Amii believes retail dominance will continue in Ireland, she would like to see more selling groups to increase the power of individual producers. Competition law in place at EU level is nearly all focused on protecting consumers but, given the unprecedented price pressure on producers, Amii recommended that a competition law for producers should be put in place also.
Leading change in Irish agriculture
Following the Nuffield scholars former ICBF boss Brian Wickham and Glanbia PLC John Moloney gave inspirational speeches.
Leaving a senior management role in New Zealand was a big step for Brian Wickham in 1998 when he took over the role of ICBF Chief. He explained the opportunity to create a new infrastructure of major importance to Irish agriculture as the factor that attracted him to Ireland. At the time cattle breeding in Ireland was in a poor state with the RBI index selecting animals of poorer profitability and several repetitive databases recording different information for the same animal.
Limited funds and facing the unenviable task of uniting the various pedigree breeding organizations did not prevent Brian from achieving his goal. In the initial years ICBF never had more than one year’s funding secured which acted as an extra incentive to Brian and his team to deliver and secure future funding.
His success with ICBF in putting together a national centralized data base continues to contribute extra profit on Irish farms.
Brian put this success down to a number of key factors such as recruiting world class talent and taking established database structures and changing them to suit Irish conditions. He also gained support from farmers such as the dairy discussion groups who assured Brian what he was doing was in the best interest of Irish farmers.
Commenting on what’s possible in animal breeding in the future Brian said he believes, “We have only scratched the surface of what animal breeding can deliver. A 50% increase in production from existing cow numbers would be possible if we keep focusing on EBI and cows with the best fertility and milk solids.”
Leading people
Glanbia boss John Maloney was given the brief ‘Leadership: A personal journey and bringing people with you’. The most recent period of Glanbia has definitely been a watershed as farmers voted with a majority of over 75% in two separate votes to reduce their shareholding in the PLC to 40% for the and also to begin the new joint venture Glanbia Ingredients Ireland Limited (GIIL).
John identified some of the key leadership and management principles he believes are critical to success. He quoted US General and later to be President Dwight Eisenhower with the phrase ‘A plan is nothing, planning is everything’ emphasizing the need to be flexible and yet know where you want to end up and what needs to be done to get there. Bringing talent up through the organization was another key principle which has served John and Glanbia well over the years.
Replying to a question on farmer representatives at board level John said he believed that with all the changes to take place in Irish dairying post 2015, farmers will start to look to the most successful commercial farmers to represent them at board level. He also stressed the importance of young people getting involved in organizations outside the farm gate as part of their own development.
On the Food Harvest 2020 goals for dairy expansion the Glanbia chief believes that if Ireland concentrates on its core strength - utilizing as much tonnage of grazed grass per hectare as possible – then 50% expansion is definitely achievable.
SHARING OPTIONS