Cash flow on Belgian dairy farms in a long time low

13 June 2016

During the first quarter of this year, the cash flow situation on the Flemish dairy farms was very low.

That concludes Jan Leyten, an agricultural economist at KBC (Belgian Bank), from new figures about the financial health of the Flemish agriculture and horticulture. The crisis at dairy farms manifests itself in different ways. One of the parameters to indicate the financial situation of the sector is ‘cash flow’, this is the difference between the incoming and outgoing cash flows. What remains is not the net income because costs such as credit charges are not taken into account. The figures for the first quarter of 2016 show how though the crisis in the sector is.

In dairy farming, the cash flow during the first months of this year is 6,1 euros per 100 litres of milk, while the average cash flow between 2011 and 2015 was 13,5 euro. The main problem of this recession is the fact that the cash flow of 2015 was already low, 8 euros per 100 litres. “And then you still need to abstract the credit charges, grants, lease charges, manure costs and private expenses", explains Jan Leyten, an agronomist at KBC.

All the figures and information can be found on this website: https://www.farmcafe.be/artikel/9256.