Milk even further below quota

By FWi staff

MILK production fell even further below profile last month, according to latest figures released by the Intervention Board.

Producers delivered 1.108 billion litres of butterfat-adjusted litres during December, nearly 40m litres or 3.5% below quota.

“It is as I predicted, and it now looks exceedingly unlikely that producers will hit the target by the end of the milk year,” says Peter Weston Davies of the Farm Consultancy Group.

The cumulative total now stands at 10.225 billion litres, 322m litres or 3% below profile. This is equivalent to nearly 8.5 days supply.

“We have never managed to pull this amount back ever before.

“Unless there is a massive temporary transfer from wholesale to direct-sale quota, or the Intervention Board finds a huge amount of extra milk (in 1998 it found an extra 19m litres), it will be impossible to claw it back,” he adds.