Up to 60% of Tirlán milk suppliers have drystock on their farms and with the cut to the derogation, the obvious thing for these farmers to do is to “reduce the drystock and retain the cows,” the CEO of Tirlán, Jim Bergin, has said.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal at the Agricultural Science Association (ASA) conference last week, he said that the finality of the derogation cut is a setback to farmers.

“There are other factors to take into consideration.

“Farmers have been buying land and renting land, some at very high prices. I would have a concern about that, as to how sustainable that is long-term.

“Secondly, a very high percentage of our farmers, between 50% and 60% have drystock on their farms, that was based on our last census.

“The obvious thing to do here is to reduce the drystock and retain the cows; the cows are the driver of value.

“There’s a question mark over where those cattle will go in the autumn and springtime,” he said.

“Beyond that it’s about whether farmers will reduce their cow numbers or not. If you look at other countries where that has happened, cow numbers have reduced but milk solids have increased substantially,” he said.

About 30% of Tirlán suppliers are operating between the 250kg of organic nitrogen per hectare (N/ha) and 220kg level.

Slaney River

Bergin said that whatever is done from this point onwards has “to be as factual and as scientific as possible”.

“There is an example at the moment on the Slaney River. The fact is that the water quality in the Slaney River isn’t up to scratch, so that has to be addressed, then the next step is to identify the root cause.

“I think the popular view at the moment is that dairy is the root cause and therefore reduction by derogation is the only way to solve that.

“But if you look at the numbers, there’s 7,500 farmers on the Slaney River and only 6% are dairy farmers, only 17% of the land.

“Dairy is a contributing factor. We have to deliver on our commitments to get that right, but we also need to understand the scale of root causes and address where the issues are coming from.”