‘We’re heading for below the cost of production now’
With milk prices in free-fall in recent months, David Brady, a dairy and free range egg farmer from Stradone has said that it may not be the end of the price cuts.
“I milk with my parents Brian and Daphne, we milk 110 cows. We supply Lakeland, there’s talk of a further drop this month, although no one knows,”
He says that it may no longer be profitable for dairy farmers as the price farmers get are not dropping as quickly as those of inputs.
“We’re heading for below the cost of production now, especially with the cost of fertilisers and feed.
“I had urea and 18-6-12 in yard from last year and only had to buy a small bit now. But some people bought a lot for the whole year when prices were high when prices €990-€1,000 per tonne last September. Now it’s €500 for urea, but few years ago fertiliser was down as low as €200-€300 a tonne.
“Feed is around €400 per tonne now but other years it was around €300. Machinery and contractor charges are a lot higher now compared to three years ago.
“Thirty cent per litre used to be where you needed to be to make money, but that has changed now. When it comes to milk price 40c is the new 30c. Nobody thought it was going to drop below 40c.”
David says some farmers could struggle as a result of the volatility.
“For some farmers the good year did more harm than good because at the end of the year they’ll be hit with a big tax bill and they won’t have the income to cover it.”
While dairy farmers were a source of envy for many in the farming world, David says the highs seen in 2022 were a freak occurrence, and that while prices were high many people didn’t appreciate the rise in costs.
“It was one good year we may not ever see again. You’re going to have peaks and troughs every couple of years, and we may never see it again.
“People say we got an extra 15c-20c a litre but they don’t see it going out the other side.”
After a wet start to the year David only managed to make silage last week.
“It’s coming in late for us because we cut it last year on May 15, when we got a good dry period around then to cut it. Cows were out in February but back in for March and April because it was just too wet.”
While some farmers struggled for fodder David had enough to see him out.
“We’re ok for silage, we closed the pit and had some bales left over, and used them as we needed. We have half a pit left over.”
He is one of 10 farmers in the Teagasc heavy soils programme,
“There’s a weather station on our farm they check our soils and growth rates to see what they can learn from it. We also did drainage on the farm they’re monitoring that as well.”
He says it can be difficult to balance his two enterprises.
“I have two hen sheds, with 15,000 chickens in total. My brother Kieran is in a partnership with me on one of the sheds.
“With the cost of building sheds, we couldn’t switch systems to another form of hen system such as broilers that would complement us better. It would be too expensive - the equivalent of switching from beef to dairy.”