Does Ireland Need To Cull 45,000 Cows?
While the tone of this video might be a little offputting, the message is quite clear. Brexit (especially a No Deal Brexit), raises a lot of opportunities as certain aspects of society get shaken up. One of those opportunities is to reinstate the Milk Quota system which was first introduced in 1984 and discontinued in 2015. The problem with milk production isn't that it is too little ... it is too much. With reference to Northern Ireland, there are around 300,000 dairy cows.
“The dairy herd stood at 306,300 cows in December 2014, exceeding the previous high of 304,900 reported in December 1985,” DARD said.
Source
Having too much production depressed the price of milk. This causes some farmers to cull their herds. Farmers cannot afford to keep animals as pets. Now there is a shortfall in the supply. Prices rise so farmers retain more cows. If one could instantly replace the missing cows, there would be no problem. However, farmers need to raise cows from calves. To replace a cow takes 2-5 years. It is the usual practice for cows to first calve at 24 months but the failure to achieve pregnancy can delay this. Another aspect that slows this replenishment is if the calves are bulls. Herd replenishment would then need to wait for the following cycles until female calves are born. As mentioned above, Britain used to have a milk quota system. Under supply management, this variability is controlled. Unlike having a cycle of one year of lower prices (due to the surplus) followed by at least two years of higher prices (due to the shortage) the market is gauged and producers are assured of a constant level of demand, and the consumers are assured a constant level of supply (with a corresponding lack of volatility in prices). A supply management system assures a set price (covering costs of production and a reasonable rate of return) for regular milk and a reduced price for surplus which are sold to the world market or as "industrial" milk.
Canada has a supply management system to support our dairy farmers. We are at a midpoint in terms of world pricing. Our prices are more than the UK (probably due in part to different climatic conditions) but are less than US pricing when you compare like products. Some of the US dairy products contain a hormone they use to stimulate production. Their uncontaminated milk costs almost 10 percent more than our milk which is produced in an environment where rbST is illegal.
One of the aspects that a person from the UK might consider is that Brexit allows you to regain control of nutritional self-sufficiency. Any society should be able to produce sufficient food to supply its own people. While one doesn't normally find oranges or bananas growing in the UK, it is more than capable of feeding its own population with its own products. Certainly one doesn't want to rely on the vagaries of a foreign politician to decide if your people will be able to eat or not. Case in point: Venezuela imports most of its food, mainly from Colombia and the United States. While the reasons that it lost its capacity to feed itself is varied, its reliance on foreign food causes internal policies to be dictated by foreign administrations.