Price Trend of Milk in Turkey

The current cost of milk in Turkey has reached the level of TRL 3.5. However, the recommended selling price announced by the committee in June was TRL 3.2 per L. Dollar Turkish lira parity and the increase in feed, energy costs resulted in a higher cost than the recommended selling price in today’s market.

At the height of the global financial crisis of 2008, milk prices had reached the level of 0.44 TL per L. During this period, producers had butchered 1 million milk production cows in slaughterhouses in order to prevent losses. After this period, milk prices had increased from TRL 0.44 TL to 0.85 per L. In order to eliminate the milk deficit that emerged in this period, the government imported livestock worth USD 3 billion.

When the current TRL-USD rate is taken into consideration, the cost of a heifer has reached the level of TRL 36,000. It seems difficult for the farmers to buy animals instead of slaughtered animals in the future.

In Europe, milk is sold at around 38 cents per L. The milk-feed parity in the world is also at the level of 1.5 (that is, by selling 1 kg of milk, 1.5 kg of feed should be bought, but at the moment, 0.8 kg is taken in Turkey). When evaluated according to this parity, milk prices in Turkey should be at the level of 5.20. In this case, the parity would be 1.3 which is reasonable.