Ahead of a crunch meeting with EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan today (Thursday), Irish Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has told the Irish Farmers Journal that he is looking for six measures to support farmers.

  • Using the flexibilities under exceptional measures to temporarily increase the threshold prices for butter and skim milk powder to levels which provide a floor under prices. Such an adjustment could provide a much-needed positive market signal and a more realistic floor price over a period of acute, but temporary difficulty for farmers.
  • The restoration of Aid to Private Storage for cheese, which was introduced by the Commission in September 2014, and was utilised to good effect by operators in Ireland and elsewhere, but discontinued thereafter.
  • The use of funding to match assigned revenues from the collection of superlevy to support the market for dairy products at this time, and if required as EU and Northern hemisphere production increases in the first half of 2016.
  • The use of exceptional promotion measures to promote the consumption of dairy and pigmeat products on EU and third country markets.
  • Increasing the advance of the Basic Payment Scheme and other elements of direct payments from 16 October 2015 to 70% to alleviate cashflow difficulties.
  • Restoring Aids to Private Storage for pigmeat, which played a useful role in stabilising pigmeat prices earlier in the year, but had been discontinued.
  • Minister Coveney said: “Swift action is now needed to restore market confidence. Member states and the Commission provided a flexible and responsive toolset for dealing with difficult market situations in the Common Agricultural Policy reformed under the Irish presidency in 2013.

    “We need proposals now that exploit the possibilities in the relevant regulations, and I intend to discuss such proposals now with the commission and with other member states.”

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