DEAR SIR: I am a Glanbia supplier. I milked 47 cows in 2020. In October 2020, I made the last big investment on the farm, which was a six-bay double shed for extra cubicles.

I presently have 35 spare cubicles in my farmyard and I now cannot put cows into this shed as the reserve pool only allocated me 8,999l.

I feel very hard done by, as I applied for 90,000l. I require this to make the repayments on the shed over the next 10 years.

Back in 2015, when we had to share up, our contract stated that we had unlimited supply.

Based on this, I planned my investments for the farm and improving my herd, aiming to get to 85 cows on 32ha. The bigger herds down the south got allocations because they have heifers on the ground and new shareholders are allocated 100 cows straight away.

I always bought in my replacements, as it was the best way to improve my herd, but this was not taken into account when Glanbia was deciding on the allocations. I was told I should be grateful for what I got.

This is a real slap in the face for a small family farm trying to keep the tradition going after six generations on the same piece of land. It will be very hard to encourage the seventh generation to continue to supply milk to Glanbia.