The agricultural output price index decreased by 1.7% in May 2015, compared with April 2015, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) says.

Looking at an annual basis, the agricultural output price index decreased by 5.5% in May 2015 compared to the corresponding month last year, it says.

CSO figures show that the agricultural input price index was up 0.5% over the same period, thus the resulting terms of trade index decreased by 2.2% in May 2015.

Annually the agricultural input price index was down 2.3% in May 2015 compared with May last year, it says.

The potato output price increased in May 2015 by 13.1% from the same last year while cereals fell by 11.9%, figures from the CSO show.

There was little change in the output price of vegetables with an increase of 0.1%, it says.

Across animals, pigs, sheep and poultry were the only areas to see a decrease in output price, with drops of 10%, 1.8% and 1.1% respectively.

The CSO says there was a drop in the output price of milk by 23.8%.

Looking to input prices, feeding stuffs fell overall by 5.4%, it says. Straight feeding stuffs fell by 10% and compound feeding stuffs fell by 4.9%.

In terms of fertiliser input prices, overall they increased by 1.5%, the CSO says. Straight fertilisers saw an increase from 2014 of 1.7% with compound fertilisers increasing by 1.2%, it found.

The price indices look at trends in prices paid to farmers for their produce and in prices paid by farmers for purchases of goods and services, the CSO says.