Speaking at a press conference following the Commission's announcement of a new support package for dairy farmers, EU farm Commissioner Phil Hogan said the full details of the support package will be revealed this Wednesday, 20 July.

The package is broken into €150m to incentivise a reduction in milk production and €350m for "targeted aid". Ireland will receive €11.1m out of the €350m. This amount can be matched by national funding. Speaking at the press conference on Monday, Hogan gave an indication of the kind of conditions that will be attached to the targeted aid.

"There will of course be conditions attached to the aid – for example, member states may have to ensure that milk production will not increase, income support should be given to farmers who have suffered siginificant losses and there will be other conditions linking to the environment."

Hogan confirmed that the money can be used across all livestock sectors.

Intervention period

Hogan also confirmed that public intervention for Skimmed Milk Powder (SMP) will be extended up until the end of February 2017. The ceiling up to which SMP is bought-in at a fixed price will stay at the revised limit of 350,000t until the end of December 2016 after which it will revert back to the usual limit of 109,000t.

As for private storage aid (PSA), both the standard (between 90 and 210 days storage) and the enhanced (365 day storage) SMP schemes will also be extended until the end of February 2017.

€150m package

Ireland is unlikely to avail of the €150m package to incentivise reduced milk production with Agriculture Minister Michael Creed reaffirming Ireland's opposed stance on the issue last week.

However, Hogan highlighted that the milk reduction scheme is targeted towards individual farmers and not individual member states.

"Farmers must trigger their interest and they will indicate this to the national authority. I envisage that processors and co-ops would also be involved at some level," he said.

The scheme will be carried out on a first-come first-served basis and applications will open in September. The scheme will then run from 1 October to 31 December 2016 and will be calculated on the amount of milk produced in this period compared to the same period in 2015.

The Commissioner said his department has estimated the incentive would work out at around 14c per reduced kg.

He added that the full details of this scheme would also be presented to member states this coming Wednesday.

Organic reforms

Monday's meeting was the first council of EU agriculture ministers to take place under the Slovakian presidency.

The Commissioner said the meeting also addressed the long-anticipated organic sector reforms and he expressed a hope that negotiations on these reforms would conclude before the expiration of the Slovak presidency at the end of 2016.

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