Beef farmers are making nothing out of beef today and it’s going to get worse, according to Prof John Fitzgerald, chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Countrywide this Saturday, Prof Fitzgerald asked how we can provide a growing and sustainable income for the farm sector.
“The answer is that farmers will have to evolve to doing some different things. Because beef farmers, and we listen to farmers, they’re making nothing out of beef today and it’s going to get worse.
“It can only get worse. The price for beef in the EU is way above the world market price and Brexit could have catastrophic effects from 1 November for the sector.
“So the prospects for beef for the future are poor and it seems unlikely in the long term that farmers will make good incomes out of beef.
“I think they need to evolve, gradually use more of their land to do other things to make sustainable incomes,” he warned.
Cutting the herd
Comparing the beef and dairy sectors, he said that in the case of milk, farmers do make money out of milk but the problem is “we can’t grow the herd”.
It seems madness to incentivise people to do things when they lose money.
“We’ve got to actually reduce it overall, because farmers make more money out of milk, you try and preserve the milk and beef falls. Because cattle produce methane emissions and a third of Ireland’s emissions come from agriculture. So the only way we can reduce emissions is reducing the herd size,” he said.
Listen to farmers
Prof Fitzgerald said that farmers need to be listened to.
“Beef farmers are making nothing. Their life is miserable and it’s going to get worse and saying to beef farmers ‘increase your production’ when the prospects for the beef industry economically are poor I don’t think makes sense.
“It seems madness to incentivise people to do things when they lose money. You need to be realistic and say many farmers producing beef are losing money. On average, they’re making nothing out of producing beef.
“To encourage them and say there are prospects when there aren’t prospects whereas if they evolved to say doing some woodland on their land they will make more money out of it and it will be better for the environment and it will give significant security.
“We’ve signed up to obligations. The people of Ireland have voted. We have signed up to obligations for 2030.
“To get a 30% reduction in our emissions, agriculture has to change. There’s no way around this,” he said.
Beef prices
The only people who are making money out of beef today are the beef factories, Prof Fitzgerald said.
“The price is way above the world market price and still farmers are losing, so in the long term saying to farmers to evolve and do something different,” he said.
Also speaking on the show was former chair of Meat Industry Ireland (MII), Ciaran Fitzgerald. He said that Ireland produces 5% of the beef and 6% of the dairy in the EU.
“We’re very, if you like, carbon efficient in production, but we sit in an accounting set structure that’s not necessarily all science-based, whereby we don’t have credits for the fact that we didn’t have an industrial revolution, etc. So there is a context to all this.
“That’s not to say that we don’t have to meet targets and I think if you look at the adoption of sustainable production, particularly in the dairy sector, I mean I was down about a month ago in Moorepark – if you look at how far along the road a lot of dairy farmers are in terms of sustainable production through pilot schemes that were launched five or six years ago, there’s huge progress being made,” he said.
Looking at Irish beef production in a global context, Fitzgerald said that he does not think it is a great outcome for climate change worldwide if beef production is reduced in Ireland and beef production is increased in Brazil.
“That is not a great outcome because the Brazilian beef industry produces 370m tonnes of CO2 a year and if you add in deforestation… we have to get this balance right.
“The other thing is too, the economic impact of the food sector is seriously underestimated. We have this set of national accounts that over-inflate the impact of the foreign direct investment sector by about €100bn and we consistently underestimate the impact of the indigenous sector, particularly the agriculture and food sector,” he said.
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Beef farmers are making nothing out of beef today and it’s going to get worse, according to Prof John Fitzgerald, chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Countrywide this Saturday, Prof Fitzgerald asked how we can provide a growing and sustainable income for the farm sector.
“The answer is that farmers will have to evolve to doing some different things. Because beef farmers, and we listen to farmers, they’re making nothing out of beef today and it’s going to get worse.
“It can only get worse. The price for beef in the EU is way above the world market price and Brexit could have catastrophic effects from 1 November for the sector.
“So the prospects for beef for the future are poor and it seems unlikely in the long term that farmers will make good incomes out of beef.
“I think they need to evolve, gradually use more of their land to do other things to make sustainable incomes,” he warned.
Cutting the herd
Comparing the beef and dairy sectors, he said that in the case of milk, farmers do make money out of milk but the problem is “we can’t grow the herd”.
It seems madness to incentivise people to do things when they lose money.
“We’ve got to actually reduce it overall, because farmers make more money out of milk, you try and preserve the milk and beef falls. Because cattle produce methane emissions and a third of Ireland’s emissions come from agriculture. So the only way we can reduce emissions is reducing the herd size,” he said.
Listen to farmers
Prof Fitzgerald said that farmers need to be listened to.
“Beef farmers are making nothing. Their life is miserable and it’s going to get worse and saying to beef farmers ‘increase your production’ when the prospects for the beef industry economically are poor I don’t think makes sense.
“It seems madness to incentivise people to do things when they lose money. You need to be realistic and say many farmers producing beef are losing money. On average, they’re making nothing out of producing beef.
“To encourage them and say there are prospects when there aren’t prospects whereas if they evolved to say doing some woodland on their land they will make more money out of it and it will be better for the environment and it will give significant security.
“We’ve signed up to obligations. The people of Ireland have voted. We have signed up to obligations for 2030.
“To get a 30% reduction in our emissions, agriculture has to change. There’s no way around this,” he said.
Beef prices
The only people who are making money out of beef today are the beef factories, Prof Fitzgerald said.
“The price is way above the world market price and still farmers are losing, so in the long term saying to farmers to evolve and do something different,” he said.
Also speaking on the show was former chair of Meat Industry Ireland (MII), Ciaran Fitzgerald. He said that Ireland produces 5% of the beef and 6% of the dairy in the EU.
“We’re very, if you like, carbon efficient in production, but we sit in an accounting set structure that’s not necessarily all science-based, whereby we don’t have credits for the fact that we didn’t have an industrial revolution, etc. So there is a context to all this.
“That’s not to say that we don’t have to meet targets and I think if you look at the adoption of sustainable production, particularly in the dairy sector, I mean I was down about a month ago in Moorepark – if you look at how far along the road a lot of dairy farmers are in terms of sustainable production through pilot schemes that were launched five or six years ago, there’s huge progress being made,” he said.
Looking at Irish beef production in a global context, Fitzgerald said that he does not think it is a great outcome for climate change worldwide if beef production is reduced in Ireland and beef production is increased in Brazil.
“That is not a great outcome because the Brazilian beef industry produces 370m tonnes of CO2 a year and if you add in deforestation… we have to get this balance right.
“The other thing is too, the economic impact of the food sector is seriously underestimated. We have this set of national accounts that over-inflate the impact of the foreign direct investment sector by about €100bn and we consistently underestimate the impact of the indigenous sector, particularly the agriculture and food sector,” he said.
Read more
Reduction of suckler herd is ‘sensible’ – Fitzgerald
Over 50% of dairy farmers interested in forestry
Call for suspension of body behind suckler cut proposal
Farmers react angrily to suckler herd cut proposal
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