Global trends in milk quality: implications for the Irish dairy industry

The quality of Irish agricultural product will become increasingly important with the ongoing liberalisation of international trade. This paper presents a review of the global and Irish dairy industries; considers the impact of milk quality on farm profitability, food processing and human health, examines global trends in quality; and explores several models that are successfully being used to tackle milk quality concerns. There is a growing global demand for dairy products, fuelled in part by growing consumer wealth in developing countries. Global dairy trade represents only 6.2% of global production and demand currently outstrips supply. Although the Irish dairy industry is small by global standards, approximately 85% of annual production is exported annually. It is also the world's largest producer of powdered infant formula. Milk quality has an impact on human health, milk processing and on-farm profitability. Somatic cell count (SCC) is a key measure of milk quality, with a SCC not exceeding 400,000 cells/ml (the EU milk quality standard) generally accepted as the international export standard. There have been ongoing improvements in milk quality among both established and emerging international suppliers. A number of countries have developed successful industry-led models to tackle milk quality concerns. Based on international experiences, it is likely that problems with effective translation of knowledge to practice, rather than incomplete knowledge per se, are the more important constraints to national progress towards improved milk quality

Youthful forward thinking Young farmers clubs of England and Wales

SIGLELD:82/10150(Youthful). / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Drought Policy in the U.S. and Australia: A Comparative Analysis

Federal and state governments in the United States and Australia have come to play a key role in attempts to mitigate the impact of drought. Government actions have usually taken the form of loans and grants to individual citizens, businesses, and municipalities experiencing the hardship of drought. Most of these actions have occurred in an environment of crisis management, rather than as a result of clearly stated policy objectives. Based on a review and evaluation of recent drought policy in the United States and Australia, recommendations are offered on ways to improve the United States’ approach. A national drought plan is suggested as an efficient mechanism through which these recommendations could be implemented. States should also become more actively involved in drought assessment and response, but these actions must be coordinated with federal actions

Agri-political organisations in environmental governance: representing farmer interests in regional partnerships

Investigations of agri-environmental programmes and their implementation often overlook the contribution of agri-political organizations (APOs). They focus instead upon the experiences of individual farmers, or the potential of farmers to be environmental stewards, the strategies or particular policy instruments employed by governments, or the workings of cooperative planning committees at river basin scales. Over the last decade in Australia, the influence and involvement of APOs in initiatives such as regional natural resource planning and the implementation of water quality policies has increased markedly but has remained largely under-researched. This paper indicates the ways these groups are becoming more embedded in the politics and operation of environmental governance and outlines the new and contested roles these groups are now playing in Australian rural landscapes. Using the case of the ongoing implementation of the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan, the paper explores tensions in the current arrangements and considers implications for ongoing participation of the farming sector in environmental governance. These tensions revolve around challenges to APOs' traditional dialogic practices; interest-based models of representation; and their capacity to align with and operate within new territorial spaces of policy implementation, such as regions

Forgotten outcomes for rural areas in central policy-making : the case of blue gums in Australia

The expansion of private forestry and the partnership between government and private sector timber growers and processors highlights the issues associated with a functionally based rather than a place based approaches to changing patterns of land use in rural areas. Rural development through blue gum forestry was promoted as a means of revitalising rural communities, providing both economic and social gains to regional areas. The purpose of this study is to examine the economic consequences of policies designed to promote plantation forestry at a local level. It concludes that while plantation forestry may bring benefits to the national economy, these benefits may not be apparent at a local level especially if the industry operates in competition with a viable alternative.<br /