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DEAR SIR
There are two recent issues in the Irish Farmers Journal which deserved better coverage and analysis.
Firstly Glanbia’s Extended Credit Scheme was only mentioned in Bill O’Keeffe’s article on page 25 of the issue dated 21 July. This is a great scheme for farmers who have endured two disastrous weather events this year.
The Irish Farmers Journal is always very quick to criticise co-ops when issues may not have been handled as well as they should be. When co-ops such as Glanbia announce innovative schemes which are of great help to farmers, they deserve credit. This scheme was worthy of first or second page headlines.
Lacking analysis
Secondly, Jack Kennedy’s article on page 27 of the Irish Farmers Journal of 11 August lacks proper analysis as to why the Greenfield dairy farm in Kilkenny may lose €150,000 this year. He states there are three big issues:
1 Milk supply down 20% - 25%.
2 Purchased feed costs three to four times higher than predicted.
3 Winter feed will have to be purchased as the herd grazed the second-cut area and the herd had to be fed part of the first-cut silage due to the prolonged drought.
Points 2 and 3 are valid as all farmers feed costs will rise dramatically this year due to extreme bad weather. Point 1 - milk supply down 20%-25% due to bad weather in March. This needs further analysis as Glanbia’s milk may be down 1% this year.
Huge expertise
Considering there is huge expertise available to the Greenfield dairy farm, this massive drop in production is very surprising. Jack Kennedy writes “milk sales fell significantly during the snow storm in March”.
It snowed on every farm in the country too. With global warming, we are liable to have more extreme weather events in the future. Farm management practices will need to be revalued, especially in the provision of winter feed for cows. The Greenfield dairy farm is a good project but they need to be more flexible.
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