Dairy farmers and co-ops

Sir, – An article by Sadhbh O’Neill (“If the unholy alliance of farm bodies and industry is successful in its lobbying, the price will be our rivers and lakes”, Climate Crisis, September 26th) states that “dairy farmers’ ownership of co-ops has been whittled away such that the sector’s vast profits are largely going to anonymous shareholders, while dairy farmers themselves are saddled with huge debts, as the most recent Teagasc farm survey showed.”

The fact is, and The Irish Times ought to be aware of this, that about 85 per cent of Irish milk is purchased by traditional co-operatives, with no external investors, and in which 100 per cent of the shares are owned by ordinary farmers, and all of the profits, if any, are paid out in milk prices and supports to members. Indeed, all dairy processing co-ops have published financial statements for last year, with the highest profits of the order of 2 per cent to 3 per cent; hardly “vast” by any reasonable measure.

The assertion that dairy farmers are saddled with huge debts is also incorrect. The average level of bank debt carried by Irish dairy farmers is of the order of €1,000 to €1,200 per cow. When examined against countries with similar farm structures and systems, such as Denmark, the Netherlands or New Zealand, our debt per cow is less than 10 per cent of theirs. – Yours, etc,

EDWARD CARR,