To ask the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development to outline her plans to assist farmers to move to lower-cost dairy production.

Mrs O'Neill

My Department plans to assist dairy farmers to move towards lower-cost production methods through the ongoing delivery of education and training programmes at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise. CAFRE will also continue to demonstrate knowledge and technology transfer projects, which aim to improve business efficiency for dairy farm businesses. From April 2015 to 16 November 2015, CAFRE delivered 57 training events aimed at improving production performance to 1,166 dairy farmers, and it is currently demonstrating five technology projects to the dairy industry. My Department will continue to work with AFBI to ensure that knowledge and technology transfer projects reflect the outcomes of research into low-cost dairy production systems. My CAFRE advisers are assisting farmers by offering workshops entitled 'Feed and Finance’ to look at the cost of milk production. In addition, my staff are assisting farmers to complete business plans and cash flows.

Participating in CAFRE's business development groups will also provide dairy farmers with the opportunity to work collaboratively, improve technical efficiency, improve business management skills and learn about new technologies and innovative ways of working. I encourage all farmers, including dairy farmers, to apply to business development groups before the closing date of 14 December.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker

That ends the period for listed questions. We now move to topical questions.