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Imagine if the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue publicly admitted he didn’t know the price beef farmers were getting at the factory, and even expressed his surprise it was so low? There would be uproar.
That’s exactly what the Minister of State for Agriculture Pippa Hackett, with a special focus on organics, admitted to IFA organic chair Nigel Renaghan at its online AGM last week, when he informed her the organic beef price was almost the same as the conventional price.
“That’s a bit of surprise to me, or shock, I should say,” Hackett confessed.
“This is something maybe the food ombudsman can be looking into.”
(We’ll come back to the non-existent, much promised, food ombudsman at a later date.)
Hackett has two ministerial advisers who earn at least €89,000/year each. She is also an organic farmer. You could argue that the organic beef prices aren’t published every week (and maybe they should be) so how was she to know?
I'm not an organic farmer, but I have the number of at least five organic farmers and one of the biggest organic beef buyers in the country in my phone, and would consider it a matter of course to check out the beef price before appearing on a public forum where I’m about to get quizzed about the viability of the organic sector.
As farmers, we are constantly told to treat our farms like a business, yet the minister in charge of the sector which can often be viewed as a “hippy” or “hobby” brand, didn’t have the business numbers to hand when they should be tripping off her tongue like ten-times tables.
The 1,500 organic farmers currently out there will tell you that farming without fertiliser or access to conventional feed to fatten cattle is no joke, yet their minister made it look like one.
It is no secret that the European Commission is pushing for 25% of land in the EU to be farmed organically by 2030, but Ireland has just 2% of land currently under organic production.
The Organic Farming Scheme has once again reopened, and it will most likely be oversubscribed by farmers.
Let’s hope Minister of State Hackett can live up to their enthusiasm, learn from her mistake, and recognise that farmers need fewer high-minded words and more hard figures to ensure the future of organics means a viable family farm income.
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