The IFA has taken grave issue with ongoing commentary that is “blaming” farmers for recent food price inflation. Tadhg Buckley, the IFA’s director of policy and chief economist, said that any proper analysis of food prices shows that farmers have been on the thin end of the wedge for decades.

“It isn’t hard to see the reality of food prices over time, the Central Statistics Office tracks them every month,” he said.

Buckley said the evidence overwhelmingly shows that food has been falling in price in real terms over the last 20 years and that recent price hikes don’t change the fact that the Irish consumer has been getting a good deal.

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He also points out that farmers have been getting a lower share of the retail price over time and are the ones carrying the cost of food price deflation. In relation to Ireland specifically, two statistics show this.

“If we look at prices back to 2008, you will see that while grocery prices in Ireland are higher than the EU average, meat and milk prices ex-farm are lower than in other EU countries,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal.

He also highlighted other high costs that Irish businesses must bear: “Wages in Ireland are 40% higher than the EU average and our energy prices are among the highest in Europe.”

Lack of supply

Buckley pointed out that one of the underlying causes of current high beef prices is lack of cattle.

“Between 2023 and 2024, there were 200,000 less cattle in Ireland,” he said. “That’s a massive drop.”

And he stressed that this is not unique to Ireland, that it’s a Europe-wide trend: “In the same time frame, there are two million less cattle across the EU.”

Normally, high prices would lead to a surge in production, bringing supply and demand back into harmony. This is not happening at the moment. He attributed this to many different factors, but highlighted two.

“The lack of young farmers, particularly in suckler and sheep production, means there is no-one to ramp up production,” he pointed out.

In short, he maintained we are running short of beef because we are running out of farmers.

Another factor is that environmental restriction is limiting the response to high prices on farms where everything else might be in place to increase output.

Price statistics

The IFA produced and shared a simple table that illustrates how farmers have been experiencing falling prices in real terms for many years.

Over the last 12 months to July, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows that food inflation has been relatively high at 4.6%. Electricity prices have only risen by 2.4% over the same period, with the overall index just up by 1.7%.

But Buckley said that is little more than a partial, and possibly temporary, correction to decades of a trend in the opposite direction.

“If you go back 20 years, you find that food prices have only gone up by 14.4%. This is dwarfed by an increase in electricity price of 158.1%. The overall CPI has increased by 40%,” he said.

Buckley maintained that Irish farmers and their families don’t exist in a bubble.

“Farmers don’t just pay high energy and other costs in their businesses. They also have to live in a high-cost economy, with the vast majority of full-time farmers on half the average industrial wage most years,” he said.

Negative and inaccurate commentary is only going to accelerate the decline in the number of young people coming into farming, he said.

“Current prices are little more than a reflection of increased production costs since 2022. If Irish consumers are paying dearly for food, it’s not because of farmgate prices, it’s much deeper than that.”