Some farmers might be bemused by the news that 133 members of Teagasc’s staff earned over €100,000 last year, and that almost 700 earned €60,000 or more.

Some farmers may even be annoyed, especially drystock farmers who averaged incomes of less than €30,000 last year (a good year) and who are paying fairly significant fees to Teagasc.

That might be looking at things upside-down. The reality is that the people who work in Teagasc’s advisory service, its education wing, and its research department are trained and skilled professionals who earn their wages. They fully deserve to be paid an equivalent wage to people in similar jobs in other parts of the economy.

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Perhaps farmers should see it as proper recognition by Government of the importance of agriculture.

After all, the State is the main funder of Teagasc, paying €184m in 2025 to provide agricultural, educational and research services to farming and agri business. So really, we should celebrate the fact that staff at Teagasc are on wages that reflect the work they do, and which reflects the fact that they live and work in an extremely high-cost economy.

Japan

The problem for those who care about food production in this country should focus on is the difficulty of farming in this high-cost economy – all the while producing for a global marketplace. This isn’t a problem confined to Ireland, or even the European Union.

Japan, like Ireland, is a very high-cost economy and farming there is facing the very same structural issues as we are. The average farmer age has shot up to 67, land is being abandoned as farmers fail to identify a successor, and average farming income is under €20,000.

And Japanese farmers are producing almost exclusively for the domestic economy. That protected market, with high tariffs for food imports, is better able to pay the kind of prices that Japanese farmers need to survive. Because we export 90% of our meat and dairy, we are operating in an even more difficult situation to the Japanese.

There are no easy solutions to this conundrum. The starting point is to face the reality of our situation.

Securing the viability of food production as a full-time job outside of dairying is extremely challenging. The fruit and vegetable sectors, heavily reliant on labour, are struggling to compete with imports when the minimum wage is €14.15 an hour. First-world food production gaining world market prices just won’t work in the long term.

Properly paying agricultural advisers, researchers and educators won’t save farming unless the farmers themselves can earn a living wage too.