Fonterra has boosted its record payout for the 2007-2008 milking season to $7.30.
It today lifted the payout prediction from the existing record forecast of $6.90/kg milksolids.
The 2006-2007 payout was $4.46/kg, and Fonterra's previous record payout, $5.33/kg in 2002, was worth $6.14/kg in 2007 dollars.
If thisseason's milk production was on a par with last year's 1.25 billion kg of milksolids, the cooperative's 10,711 farmer shareholders would each receive an average payment of more than $850,000.
Milk yields at last year's level would mean a total payout of over $9 billion nationally.
Analysis by agricultural economists of the cost of the 2007-08 drought says it will take $894 million from expected dairy earnings - an average of $79,400 for each dairy farm.
The extent to which the national economy benefits further from the final payout will depend largely on how the national milk collection has been affected by the drought.
Some individual farmers may not get the full potential benefit from the high payout because the drought has constrained their herd's milk yields, or because they have had to pay high prices for supplementary feed to maintain milk production.
