A fall of 24.3% in fertiliser prices and a drop of 13.8% in feed prices in 2024 have been projected by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) when compared with the previous year.

The CSO has projected that, overall, the agricultural price input index will fall by 9.8% this year, when compared with 2023.

Veterinary expense prices are projected to increase by 4.1%.

Output price indices are projected to rise by 6.8% in 2024 due to increases in potatoes (+31.6%), sheep (+15.4%) and milk (+15.1%) when compared with 2023.

The output price index for cereals is projected to fall by 21%.

The annual terms of trade is projected to increase by 18.5% in 2024 when compared with the year 2023.

Milk intake

Separately, data from the CSO shows that milk intake was up in September 2024 when compared with the same month last year.

Domestic milk intake by milk processors and co-ops was estimated to have increased marginally by 0.8% or 5.9m litres. September 2024 saw a total of 769.6m litres of milk was taken in.

However, this was down 2% or 16.1m litres when compared with the same month in 2022.

From January to September 2024, milk intake decreased by 4.1% or 301m litres to just under 7bn litres when compared with the same time period last year.

There is a decline of 5.2% or 383.2 million litres when compared with the first nine months of 2022.

Fat content for September 2024 was 4.60%, up from 4.55% in September 2023. Protein content was also up from 3.78% to 3.88% in the 12 months to September 2024.

Butter production rose slightly from 26,100t in September 2023 to 26,600t in September 2024, an increase of 500t.

Skimmed milk powder (SMP) dropped by 1,700t, from 12,700t in September 2023 to 11,000t in September 2024.