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Looming changes to the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), nitrates rules and issues surrounding carbon emissions were to the fore in farmers’ concerns voiced at a recent Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) meeting.
Several politicians were on hand to hear the issues raised, including Michael King (Fine Gael), Alan Dylan (Fine Gael) and Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Féin).
They heard farmers voice concerns over CAP and changes to the nitrates plan.
John O’Malley from Westport in Co Mayo told the Irish Farmers Journal that there was a lot of worry among farmers.
He said: “We will not stand for our farms and farm incomes being curtailed in any way.
“We intend to carry on farming as we have been, well into the future and be able to pass our farms down to our children and grandchildren.
“The Government are blaming farmers too much for the climate crisis. Animals in the west of Ireland have a diet consisting 99% of grass - some farmers here don’t buy any meal at all,” he explained.
O’Malley said that the farmers of the west of Ireland don’t mind playing their part in climate action and that they have been all along, but they don’t want to be told to cut farming back and let rushes grow instead.
O’Malley was adamant that farmers in the west of Ireland were not to blame and said: “We haven’t done that much wrong.”
Referring to proposed nitrates action plan changes, he argued that bringing forward the slurry deadline to 15 September was not a “common sense approach”.
The Westport farmer said that “farmers aren’t stupid, they aren’t going to spread slurry in wet weather and cut up ground, they want to get the value out of their slurry too”.
John Ger Davitt, a sheep farmer from Castlebar, said that “the devil will be in the detail” of what the next CAP will actually mean for farmers.
“We still have no plan and a lot of farmers are worried how they will be affected by the targets and how they will be implemented on farm,” he said.
Davitt called for the Government to sit down with IFA leaders and work out practical, workable solutions in order for farmers to hit targets, otherwise they will face “substantial costs”.
“The nitrates directive was originally about water quality, now it is widened out into a whole load of other measures.”
Davitt said that he was disappointed that the €1.5m for carbon farming was diverted into other areas in the recent budget.
Davitt went on to say that a lot of farmers in Mayo are organic in everything but name, but wouldn’t qualify as a result of the minimum stocking rate of 0.5LU/ha which is required.
“A standard minimum stocking rate of 0.15 LU for all eco schemes should be in place,” he concluded.
Austin O’Malley, a sheep and suckler farmer from Louisburgh, Co Mayo, told the Irish Farmers Journal that the suckler cow and sheep premiums in the recently announced CAP schemes were not enough and that the Government was not listening to farmers.
“€2 of an increase on the ewe, it wouldn’t buy a chocolate bar,” he retorted.
O’Malley is also very concerned about the rise of farm costs.
“They talk about better prices for beef, but the price of meal has gone crazy over the last 18 months. It’s the same with fertiliser, farmers won’t be fit to buy fertiliser, it just doesn’t match up,” he said.
He said that farmers are being “pulled through the gutter” and that young people must be enticed into farming or they will walk away from it.
"There must be youngsters coming on in everything, whether its football or farming, they must be there to take over," he concluded.
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