Dairymen stung by £5.8m levy

DAIRY FARMERS will be faced with a superlevy bill of £5.8m for the past milk year, after they exceeded wholesale quota for the first time since 1999/00.

Final figures released from the Rural Payments Agency on Fri, July 30, show that the national dairy herd exceeded quota by almost 24m litres after butterfat adjustments and temporary quota conversions.

Farmers produced 14.03bn litres of milk, after leap year adjustments, at an average butterfat of 3.97%.

Butterfat-adjusted, the total production was just over 14.03bn litres, slightly above the national quota before transfers between wholesale and direct sellers.

Wholesale producers bought a net 8.7m litres of quota from direct sellers and leased out a net 27m litres – slightly more than the RPA‘s provisional estimate.

This reduced the amount of available quota by 18.3m litres.

A levy of 24.51p/litre will be charged to those purchasers who exceeded quota, and will be passed down to suppliers who produced more than their quota holding.

Direct sellers also exceeded quota, by 8.8m litres, incurring a total levy of £2.2m, or 14.07p/litre.