Letter from Brussels - May 2025

Last month, I travelled to its capital, Helsinki, with a group of Irish dairy executives to visit co-ops and farms. It was easy to see why the Finns are happy. It’s because they are calm and humble. In the city centre of Helsinki, you don’t hear a car horn honked, and people generally communicate quietly in bars and restaurants. The city is clean, albeit expensive, and the Finns don’t like show-offs!
Finland is celebrating the 30th anniversary of joining the EU in 1995 along with Sweden and Austria. It’s a vast country with the longest border with Russia of any EU member state but has a relatively small population of 5.6 million.
Over two thirds of the land area of Finland is planted in forestry while milk production is most prevalent in northern Finland near Lapland towards the arctic circle. There are around 4,000 dairy farms in Finland, a figure that continues to drop. Thirty years ago, that figure was 33,000.
Today, the average Finnish dairy farm has around 60 cows producing over 9,000 litres at 4.4 per cent fat and 3.61 per cent protein. Sixty per cent of the milk is milked by robots. Despite the very cold weather, the farmers we met told us that grass grows relatively well in their climate and grass forms most of the animal's diet. Holstein is the predominant breed of dairy cow with most calves for beef production are born on dairy farms
Finland boasts a strong co-op ethos just like in Ireland with the ICOS equivalent, Pellervo, formed in the late 1800s, around the same time as ICOS. There are 3,300 co-operatives in total. Today, its largest dairy co-operative is Valio which owns 13 dairy processing co-operatives responsible for 80 per cent of Finnish milk output.
Valio is a massive Finnish success story and accounts for 25 per cent of total Finnish food exports. Outside of core dairy, it owns hundreds of food products supplying to consumers, to retail, and to foodservice. We met Dr Kevin Deegan from Wexford who has been in Finland for 18 years and has worked his way up to vice president of innovation at Valio. He gave a fascinating overview of the level of innovation and sustainability which our group took huge interest in learning about.
Finnish agriculture is defined by its vast forestry sector, but it can be proud of its dairy industry too. Before we left, we were also shown slides about Finnish cows being among the healthiest in the world. Between happy people and healthy cows, it sounds like the sort of place where Santa Claus would live. Oh wait…