Welcome to this special Focus on the Kerry Agribusiness Milk Quality & Sustainability Awards.

The competition aims to identify and celebrate the success of the top performing farmers in terms of milk quality and sustainability among the 3,000 or so Kerry Agribusiness milk suppliers.

The awards recognise the long history that Kerry Agribusiness suppliers have of supplying quality milk to their creamery.

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The region has a very strong dairy heritage and Kerry Agribusiness has a long history of working with its milk suppliers to ensure adoption of best practice initiatives;

“We are proud of our dairy heritage and these awards provide an opportunity to recognise the excellent quality and sustainability standards across our milk supplier farms.”

Global customers

“We showcase our grass-fed sustainable dairy production to our global customers who are becoming more focused on our sustainable advantage associated with our grass-based system,” Pat Murphy, CEO of Kerry Group’s realigned dairy business, says.

The awards have come about as a way for Kerry to recognise and highlight the exceptional quality and sustainability standards across their milk supplier farms.

They recognise the perpetual importance of quality and ever growing importance of sustainability.

This is especially important in light of the growing awareness around the importance of adoption of sustainability actions on-farm and quality metrics for continuous quality improvement.

Over the next five pages, each of the nine contestants is profiled from across the catchment in Kerry, Limerick, Cork and Clare.

We thank the farmers for opening their farms to the judges and for being so open with their information and sharing the secrets to their success.

The judges were Mary-Anne Hurley from Munster Technological University, Ailish Moriarty and Sean McCarthy, who look after milk quality and sustainability with Kerry, and myself, Aidan Brennan, from Irish Farmers Journal.

The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on 8 August and will be featured again in the Irish Farmers Journal.