Wales has seen an increase in the amount of quota held over the last four years, with the total quota up 1.6% between the milk year 2005/06, and milk year 2006/07 to 1,573.1 million litres. Although there has been an increase in the amount of quota held, there has been a large drop ( 13.8%) in the number of quota holders between milk years 2003/04 and 2006/07. This maybe due to the reduction in the number of dairy farmers in England and Wales from 16,977 in 2003 to 13,778 in 2006 a reduction of 18.8%. This suggests that some of the remaining farmers have purchased more quota as the reduction in quota holders is greater than the reduction in the total quota held. This would give an average quota holding of just over 686,000 litres for 2006/07, compared to 2003/04 where the average quota holding was just under 570,000 litres, this is a 20% increase in average quota held between 2003/04 and 2006/07.

* Provisional
Source: RPA