The Department of Agriculture has announced that 556 farmers have applied to reduce their milk production under Phase II the Voluntary Milk Reduction Scheme.
This phase of the scheme covers reductions in the three month period commencing November 1, 2016 to January 31, 2016.
According to the Department, the scheme has seen farmers apply to reduce their milk production by 98m litres, approximately 6.4m of which is from Irish farms.
It also says that the significant subscription rate for Phase I of the scheme has meant that less than 1% of the overall budget is available for Phase II.
As expected, this was not enough to cover the volume of applications received and so the European Commission has applied a coefficient of just under 0.125 to all applications.
This means that applicants for the scheme will only be compensated for 12.5% of the amount for which they applied.
Example:
If a farmer applied for a 10,000L reduction in output, they will be compensated for reducing their output by 1,250L.
The Department will be in touch with the applicants for the scheme in the coming days to inform them of this result and authorising them to proceed with their reduction if they so wish.
52,000 farmers apply for Phase I of milk reduction scheme
According to figures from the European Commission, over 52,000 dairy farmers across Europe applied to take part in the first tranche of the milk reduction supply measure.
The volume of milk entered into the scheme varies from producer-to-producer, it says, but milk production in Europe is expected to fall by 2.9% in the final three months of 2016 on the back of this measure.
The national uptake varied considerably for Phase I, with volume reductions ranging from 286,000t in Germany and over 100,000t in France and the UK.
France accounted for the largest number of participating dairy farmers, with 13,000 French farmers opting into the scheme, while 10,000 German, 4,400 Irish and 4,000 Dutch farmers opted to reduce their milk production.