Eoin O'Duffy Lounge

Forwarded from Irish Farmer

There's a lot to unpack here, as they say. It's a good subject to really get bogged into the current farming situation here, its nitty gritty legal talk, all about a basic part of the current agri system.

There's a plethora of questions to ask, from the very basics up to the theoreticals.

Why are there calves being exported? Why is there so many Dairy farms now? The Milk quota, Irish cattle export in general and ofc, animal welfare.

The knock on effects of such a change like banning or limiting calf exports would be sizeable, but: first things first, why is there so many extra calves in the country? The milk quota was removed.

The milk quota: the "Mountains of butter" agri policy the EU had was the EU would pay farmers to produce food, no matter if anyone wanted it or not. This led to vast overproduction, in order to limit production, the EU put a quota on how much milk individual farms/creameries/member states could produce. This basically let a farmer know how much he would probably earn each year, and the over production would stop interfering in the global market.

This type of policy was kept, and further developed, instead of farmers getting fined (as it was the early EU policy set up), farmers now get paid to fulfil tasks, essentially anything from maintaining stone walls to really what amounts to excessive record keeping.

A problem arose as the amount of people, the Chinese etc, wanting powdered milk and kerrygold butter just kept getting higher.

To fulfil the market demand, in 2015, the Milk Quota was removed. Farmers could now produce as much milk as they wanted again.

Now, as is the eternal thread in farming, that solution created another problem. In order for a cow to produce milk, it has to have a calf, and there's a fair few calves around because dairy farms have grown considerably in terms of the total % of cattle in the country. The problem with that is they are bred to barely put on any meat and put all their energy into milk instead. The general practice is to breed the milking cows with a Beef bull whenever possible, so the calf will get fat if they just get packed full of grain.

Now, I'm from Donegal, and I've only ever seen barley planted 3 times in my life, so I know nothing about tillage farming, but they're intertwined here too growing food for cattle. There's better informed people than me to explain that situation.

I'll use an example I seen myself: after the milk quota was gone, a guy bought computerised calf feeders. He bought in 100 dairy calves and each one got an electronic collar. To be clear, this guy kept the place spotless, thick straw bedding in a giant shed (calves had rakes of room) with good airflow at the correct temperature and excellent vet care. Each calf had a daily allocation of milk replacer, and the computer would give it the exact amount it wanted until the ration was used up for the day.

Now, you can probably see how that would affect traditional suckler farmers, who have a beef bull and beef cows, who are having calves bred for meat, in a market saturated with cheap mince (with horse meat in it), price fixing by giant beef corporations, and every other current economic problem that's hitting everyone, the Irish agri situation is precarious at best, even before we talk about "the markets". The interaction between each farming sector is like a constant tugowar except theres one rope and dozens of different people all pulling in different directions, some only pulling at stray strands, others with their feet planted with a good grip. I haven't even mentioned Bord Bía and the huge number of other semi agri bodies in this country. Kerrygold, the amount of industrial and artisan cheeses and yoghurts. We're talking major, major money in every part of the country.

One change in the current fluctuating quasi eqilibrium and it could end up looking like a dinner dropped on the floor.

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