While the abolishment of milk quotas has brought many positives and opportunities to the sector, we must avoid a system drift – as seen in other countries that have expanded – which could put our “grass-fed marketing strategy at risk”.
This was the message from Teagasc’s head of dairy research, Padraig French, at the Teagasc National Dairy Conference held in Killarney, Co. Kerry, yesterday, December 3.
During his presentation, he highlighted a number of challenges that are facing, or could face, the sector in the future; including animal welfare, the environment and a system drift – which he sees “as the biggest risk to the sector”.
Also Read: ‘Absolutely no foundation’ to ‘morbid rumours’ about calf welfareExplaining this, he said:
When we look at all the other countries which have expanded, the first stage of expansion is increased grass utilisation and the second phase is about chasing increased milk production from bought-in feed.
The graph (in the slide below) shows protein efficiency; so it looks at the net protein produced relative to the amount of protein consumed.
“The total mixed ration (TMR) systems are consuming proteins that are edible by humans, to produce protein that are also edible and they are roughly on a par; so there is no efficiency gain there,” Padraig highlighted.
Whereas internationally, he stated: “Grass-based systems produce about 2.5kg of protein per kg of protein consumed; but if you look at the Irish system, which is even more efficient, it’s about 4kg of protein per kg of protein consumed.”
Continuing, he said: “If we stand back and look at it, can we long-term defend an industry that is importing feed or proteins from other parts of the world?
“Whether it is palm kernal from Malaysia or soyabean from Brazil, to convert, to feed cows, to produce protein to export to some other part of the world, and some of our competitors that are doing that are asking serious questions at Government level – is that sustainable?
I don’t think that long term we will be able to defend an industry that is bringing in a lot of protein, to produce protein for further export – and all the environmental implications that go with it.
The second graph (seen below) presented by Padraig looks across what happens when production was intensified.
Explaining this, he said: “We have looked at it in three stages. We have looked at if we go from a low stocking rate to a high stocking rate – one of the impacts is we obviously increase output; but we also increase carbon sequestration.
“So we factor in more carbon within our soils, as we increase grass growth and grass utilisation.
“However, when we move to a more intensive, indoor type system, more conserved feed, more harvested feed, more crops – other than grass – we deplete that carbon sequestration system quite rapidly and we release a lot more carbon,” he added.
Putting our marketing strategy at risk
Padraig went on to explain how a system drift could put our grass-fed marketing strategy at risk.
He stated: “From a neutral efficiency point of view, it doesn’t make any sense and we’re taking away from our low-cost grass-based system.
The last problem that we have with the system drift, is that we have built a marketing strategy around our grass-based system.
“We are now selling our milk products as grass fed and all these graphs are taken off the Ornua website, where they are marketing our Kerrygold butter – all the cows are out grazing and that is what we are marketing.
“And, it’s not that we decided that we should market on grass fed purely because we were grass fed, it was because the world has changed.
All around the word there are dairy products that are being marketed as grass fed; but, we are the leaders in grass fed and it makes perfect logic that we should focus on it and exploit that.
“If we have system drift, if we have increased milk production from bought-in feed, it reduces our economic resilience; we will become less competitive and less able to cope with the next downturn in milk price.
“We will have less nutrients coming onto out farms and ultimately nutrients leaking out of our systems, we will increase carbon emissions and we will undermine our marketing strategy,” he concluded.