DEAR SIR:

Having attended the Macra na Feirme national conference recently, I was glad to see the issue of land mobility and the transfer of land being highlighted.

One issue that wasn’t mentioned was that of large stud farm businesses and conglomerates accumulating huge portfolios of land.

Much of this land never reached the market having been sold off to these large cash buyers.

Stud farm

In my own south Tipperary, one well-known stud farm has accumulated over 25,000 acres of some of the best land in the country. This land is unlikely to see the rental or any market for many lifetimes to come.

How can young farmers compete with an industry making hundreds of thousands a week from stud fees.

It is almost now a weekly occurrence in Tipperary that another large farm with no successor has been purchased and we hardly even ask as to who the buyer was.

Surely it is not fair they can also draw a single farm payment on every acre of this land.

A recent Macra survey indicated 48% of farmers in their 60s have no successor and this is what these buyers are counting on.