It is absolutely crucial that farmers don’t end up with less money in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Colm O’Donnell, Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association (INHFA) president, has said.

Speaking at the association’s AGM in Sligo last week, he said that Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed will have a challenge on his hands as a result.

“I think you should be mindful, minister, of the recent figures from the National Farm Survey, which flagged an increasing apparent coming that we have a possible two-tier structure on Irish agriculture. Based on the figures, it is dairying and large tillage enterprises versus the rest and this is very worrying.’’

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“They have put Irish farms into three categories; viable, sustainable and vulnerable and in our CAP strategic plan, we have to be acutely aware of those figures coming from Teagasc because over 50% of Irish farms only remain sustainable because the farmer or spouse has an off-farm income,” he said.

Also speaking at the AGM was the Minister for Agriculture, who invited the INHFA to sit on the Farmers’ Charter of Rights committee, the direct payments committee and the Department’s CAP Rural Development Programme monitoring committee. He also announced that he will consult with the farm organisations and stakeholders in the industry on CAP 2020 on 4 July.

Worried

INHFA vice-president Henry O’Donnell also told the association’s AGM that INHFA was glad to see a commitment from Government to back the front-loading of payments proposal from the INHFA.

“But we are now worried that it has been diluted in the latest draft proposals. We also proposed capping of individual payments to allow fairer distribution of payments but we are now worried that the mechanisms proposed to do this will make any capping introduced, less meaningful,” he said.