13 October 2022

2 minute read

By: Global Ag Media

EU milk production is not expected to recover in 2023, according to the European Commission's most recent short-term outlook. Feed quality and availability and the heat body stress impacted negatively also milk fat and protein content. From January to July, they recorded even stronger drops than the production (-1.2% in both cases, while EU milk deliveries dropped by 0.5%). This implies a lower availability of milk solids for processing, and thus contributing to an already worsened dairy production outlook.

With the further expected decline of EU milk deliveries, milk fat and protein availability will continue declining, even more if certain nutrients are not provided due to the lack of their availability or not being in a satisfactory amount in the feed. Therefore, it is expected that milk fat content could drop by 0.8% while milk protein content even more (1%).

In 2023, especially the start of the year could remain challenging for many farmers when providing feed and coping with high input costs, in addition to potentially weaker consumer demand following rising food inflation. However, assuming normal weather conditions, it is expected that the yield growth could be slightly higher (+0.6%). This could to some extent compensate for further dairy herd reduction (-0.8%) which seems to be a pattern now, following structural changes in some EU countries. As a result, EU milk collection could drop by 0.2% next year.