The old economic truth that the cure for high prices is high prices has come to pass. Indeed, the hot weather has lasted longer than the good news around farm incomes.

The Teagasc National Farm Survey for 2025, with its reporting of massive percentage increases in farm incomes, is only two weeks old.

Now, it has quickly been supplanted by the outlook for farm incomes for 2026, which shows an even more dramatic fall in incomes this year.

This highlights two separate and linked problems. One is the actual income levels for all sectors outside dairy and tillage- drystock incomes are again falling way below the minimum wage in 2026.

But for those farms making a decent income, particularly dairy farms, income volatility is a massive issue. The IFA and ICMSA are both calling for taxation measures to allow farms to cope with incomes that lurch up and down like a small boat on a high sea. Money would be set aside in a good year, to be drawn down when incomes contract. Hopefully the Government will listen.

The grim reality is that thousands of farmers are putting 39 hours or more labour per week in for less than the minimum wage

Off-farm employment will continue to be vital for all sectors other than dairy. Perhaps the metric employed to assess farm incomes and farm viability could focus on the proportion of time a farmer spends working their holding, and the income generated on a time commitment basis.

The grim reality is that thousands of farmers are putting 39 hours or more labour per week in for less than the minimum wage. I see the IFA is now calling for farm incomes to be benchmarked to the average industrial wage.

It certainly would highlight the commitment of farm families, particularly when the “invisible” unpaid or barely-paid labour of other family members is added in.

And many farms with six-figure incomes have more than one family member working on them; one perhaps on lower pay, working towards taking over in time.

Tillage farmers are increasingly running part-time operations, in part because of the time-saving attached to more high-tech operations, and also due to the high cost of investment in tillage equipment- it’s a push-pull dynamic.

In that regard, the idea that off-farm income be included as a measure of farm viability is upside-down. The need to bring supplementary income in alongside farming income created a viable family income, but so what?

No one considers other income streams when appraising the viability of incomes of teachers, mechanics or dentists.

The only laying hens included in farm income calculations should be feathered ones.