The door to Tirlán’s milk pool is still open to new entrants to dairying, but only if they can show that they comply with environmental regulations, according to senior sustainability manager at Tirlán Thomas Ryan.
Ryan said that once prospective suppliers commit to participating in environmental programmes run by the State and the processor, the co-op would not “stand in the way” of them getting into milk.
The sustainability head suggested that Tirlán was moving to shift the terms of the milk purchasing policies it holds with farmers “to reflect the new agenda of getting the balance right”.
He added that the pent-up demand for expansion seen in the early post-quota years was unlikely to continue into the future.
“Our door is open, and why wouldn’t you be part of dairying?” Ryan told the Agricultural Science Association (ASA) conference on Thursday.
“The growth that we have seen since 2015 isn’t an indication of the future. The pent-up demand that existed in the sector, I mean in effect, dairy farmers were handcuffed since 1984,” he said.
“That pent-up demand that we would have seen has been broadly delivered on, so we are going to see a big drive, I think, over the next period of time [to efficiency].
“The days of just relying on more numbers to deliver output, that’s not the reality of the future. Efficiency is very much what will be relied on,” Ryan said.
SHARING OPTIONS