ICOS was invited to the Commission’s conference on the 2024 prospects for the Agricultural Markets in the past week in Brussels

This report gave a medium-term outlook of the EU agricultural commodity markets, including dairy products, and agriculture income to 2024.

For us in the dairy sector, it is foreseen that the milk deliveries will increase 12 million tons over 10 years, up to 158 million tons in 2024.

The mood around dairy was in stark contrast to the Teagasc outlook held in Ireland recently, with economists continuing to refer to milk as ‘white gold’ and the star performer in  EU agri in the medium term.

This is notwithstanding the undoubted difficulties we will face in the sector through Q1 and Q2 of 2015.

They project that prices are expected to remain firm at around 350€ per ton. And future global demand for dairy product will drive that.

From a demand perspective world imports will increase +2.1% per year. The EU is expected to be the main contributor to satisfy the demand. (see graph above).

Full report here: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/markets-and-prices/medium-term-outlook/index_en.htm