This week’s front page story confirms the recent trend is continuing – dairy cow numbers are falling, suckler cow numbers are falling, and the fall in numbers has accelerated.

It may be that the dairy decline will stop this year. Derogation farmers had to take measures during 2024 to keep them within new nitrates limits. Some would have cut numbers in late 2023, some may have waited until after 1 March of last year, the snapshot of the 2024 herd taken as a baseline. It’s also true that some of the reduction in dairy cows comes as a result of voluntary dairy dispersals, as farmers fail to find successors.

However, there are little or no nitrates pressures driving farmers to cut suckler numbers. The overriding reason for keeping fewer beef cows or none at all is the inability or unwillingness of older farmers to manage them anymore.

While increased live exports are a factor in the overall drop in numbers, almost 48,000 of the 69,000 drop in beef cattle numbers are suckler cows. The 6.5% drop is stark, continuing the recent trend.

But outside the beef factories, I have a feeling that most people are not that concerned. If the consistent erosion of the suckler herd is now seeing “Mr Want” deliver buoyant beef prices, that’s great news for remaining suckler farmers, and indeed for dairy farmers who produce a calf worth fattening.

The same is true of sheep farming, where buoyant prices over the last two years have not reversed a steady drop in ewe numbers.

But can tight supplies nationally maintain beef prices if global markets turn?

The fall in cattle numbers means the inventory for the carbon footprint of Irish farming is dropping.

Less livestock means not just less methane, but also less fertiliser and less animal feed. This might, on the face of it, suit Government, and also perhaps farmers who want to drive on and not be curtailed by sectoral targets.

If farmers getting out reduce the inventory, those staying in won’t have to reach so far to hit sectoral targets. They will hope that land to lease or rent becomes more affordable as people exit production.

There is always a caveat. In this case, it’s clear from the figures that the areas losing suckler cows most are not where dairying or tillage will supplant drystock. The risk of land abandonment and under-farming is real.

Again, there are those who would welcome this as a development. It might free up land to be returned to nature, or for commercial forestry.

But this would effectively be the regionalisation of food production, away from those counties where it is the heartbeat of the local economy.

Across the west of Ireland, the north-west and along the banks of the Shannon, rural economies depend on farming, rural communities are backboned by farm families. Is there any difference in actively taking that away and in allowing it to die through the failure to act?