Despite often being on the receiving end of many farmers’ ire over the past five years, farmers have been broadly happy with Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney.

According to the Irish Farmers Journal/RED C exclusive poll of 1,000 farmers, 47% of those surveyed described Minister Coveney’s performance as either “excellent” or “good”. A further one third of those surveyed described Coveney’s performance as “adequate”.

Of those unhappy with the performance of the outgoing Agriculture Minister, 18% of those surveyed described his performance as either “not very good” or “very poor”.

The farmers surveyed are broken down as follows – 49% from Leinster, 57% from Munster and 38% from Connacht/Ulster.

Looking into the future, farmers, unsurprisingly, want a Fine Gael TD to be the next Minister for Agriculture.

Looking closer at the figures, 55% of those surveyed said they would like to see Simon Coveney return to the position for the next five years.

Exactly, 70% of those voting for Fine Gael want Coveney to remain on in the position, oddly 33% of Fianna Fáil supporters want Coveney to say on with 37% of voters who will vote for an independent candidate want the current Minister to remain in place.

Listen to a full analysis of our exclusive poll of 1,000 farmers in the podcast below:

After Coveney, Fianna Fáil agriculture spokesman Éamon Ó Cuív on 21% of preferences. Half of farmers who will vote Fianna Fáil want Ó Cuív to lead the sector in the next government.

Next comes Fine Gael TD Michael Ring on 8%, Wicklow Fine Gael TD Andrew Doyle on 6%, Fine Gael Wexford TD Paul Kehoe on 5%, Labour TD for Longford/Westmeath Willie Penrose on 3% and Sinn Féin agriculture spokesman Martin Ferris on 2%.

Compared to an Irish Farmers Journal poll in September 2011, 61% of those 1,000 polled were either satisfied or very satisfied with Minister Coveney’s performance.

Looking back to a Red C poll prior to the 2011 general election, then Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith had 21% of those polled happy with his performance.

Exclusive poll: Farmers happy with Coveney’s performance

In our exclusive Red C poll of 1,000 farmers, over half of those surveyed want to see Simon Coveney remain as Agriculture Minister in the next government.