ICOS recently attended an agri commodity outlook session in Commission offices.

It was interesting to see that the dairy session of the day was under the title ‘Milk and Dairy – The White Gold’ by DG Agri officials.

Their projections of milk deliveries in the 9 years after quota to 2024 across the EU are quite sluggish in growth reaching a level of 160 million tonnes, only 12 million tonnes over current levels.

They are also projecting a decrease in dairy cow numbers to 21 million from 23 million today, but with obvious output increase per cow offsetting the decline.

The annual growth of milk production in the EU 2014 – 2024 is assumed to be only around 0.6%. Growth projections for other regions were –

• Global growth running at an average 2%
• The US an average of 1%
• India surging by 4% per year
• A restricted NZ increasing by 2%

Fonterra presented at the session also, and stated that they viewed the commission projections as conservative, saying that they believed that the EU had the capacity to grow at a much stronger rate.