Recent trends show mainly increasing farm sizes and yield per cow in developed countries, according to the International Farm Comparison Network, which held its 14th IFCN Dairy Conference June 3-5 in Tekirdağ, Turkey.
Around 70 participants, representing 43 countries, attended the conference and created an outlook on future milk production.
It concluded that global demand is running faster than milk output.
Dairy products demand is boosted by a combination of increasing population and increasing per capita consumption in emerging countries due to improving welfare conditions, according to the network. Milk production is fast growing in emerging countries only, mainly due to increasing number of farms.
On a long term basis, world milk price is expected to continuously increase. Short term, increasing volatility is expected as a consequence of highly reduced stocks to be used to face temporarily shortages.
IFCN predicted 2013 will be an exceptionally good year pricewise due to limited production increase (bad weather conditions and bad farm economics in 2012) and strong demand. It also predicts 2014 will have stronger milk output, but with demand easing prices and high volatility within the year.
The capital intensive farming model will be more exposed to margin reduction due to a combination of price volatility and increasing milk production costs, the network predicts.
—From International Farm Comparison Network news release
