How many applied for the milk reduction scheme in your county?

Almost one third of the country’s dairy farmers applied for the first tranche of the €150m EU-wide milk production reduction scheme before last month’s deadline.

Some 52,101 dairy farmers from across the EU applied for the first tranche of the scheme by the closing date of 21 September. Those farmers applied for a collective 1.07m tonnes, or just over 1bn litres.

This means that should all farmers take up the allocation they applied for, there will be 11,407t, or 11.4m litres, available for the second tranche.

In Ireland, Cork has the highest volume of dairy farmers who applied for the scheme, which pays farmers 14c/l (12.2p/l) to reduce milk supply between October and December this year.

Exactly 1,153 farmers from Cork applied for the scheme. Next came Kerry with 711 farmers from the county applying, followed by Limerick on 494, Tipperary on 329, Monaghan on 203 and Cavan on 175.

Total

In total, 4,447 farmers from the Republic of Ireland applied for the dairy aid scheme. In the UK, 1,849 applied for the scheme; 611 came from Northern Ireland. Ireland had the third highest volume of applications after France with 12,957 farmers and 9,947 from Germany.

Farmers in the Republic applied to reduce 74,225t of milk. Germany applied for 286,049t, France applied for 181,398t, while the UK applied for 112,028t.

The average Irish farmer applied to reduce supply in their herd by 17,000 litres. On a 70-cow herd, 17,000 litres equates to approximately 10 days’ supply. In the UK, the average volume per herd is 61,000 litres.

What is becoming increasingly likely is that the amount of farmers who applied for the scheme are unlikely to draw down what they have applied for.

Milk supply in Ireland and Europe has been reducing naturally over the past few months and the European Commission expects that this initiative will reduce supply event further.

Read more

Lisavaird tops August milk league

How to apply for round two of the milk reduction scheme