Seasonal Adjustments Compensate Dairy Farmers
UK - Dairy Farmers of Britain has announced a special one-off adjustment to its spring seasonality scheme for 2008 to compensate members for any knock-on effects from last year’s poor summer.
11 February 2008
1 minute read
This will involve temporarily raising the base from which March and April seasonality deductions are calculated from the standard 100% of rolling annual production (RAP) to 105%.
“Many members saw yields reduced last summer due to the atrocious weather,” explained membership director, Matt Sheehan. “As a result, the rolling average production on which their seasonality payments are based may well have fallen quite significantly. So, without any change they would be facing higher penalties for spring production than normal through no fault of their own.
“While we need to encourage a further shift away from spring production, we feel it’s unfair our members should be penalised for last summer’s weather-related problems. By raising the RAP seasonality base by 5% for March and April we aim to ensure no one is.”
The adjustment will, for instance, halve the seasonality deduction on all litres for a Dairy Farmers of Britain member producing 1100 litres against an RAP base of 1000 litres in both these months.
“As well as giving timely support to all those suffering weather-related reductions in annual production, of course, this special adjustment will provide valuable assistance to anyone deliberately expanding production levels,” added Matt Sheehan.
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