Recruitment to the agricultural industry is a challenge not limited to inside the farm gate, Dairy Industry Ireland director Conor Mulvihill told the Irish Farmers Journal.
Competition from the pharmaceutical sector for hard-working young people from farming backgrounds means that even well-paid jobs of €60,000 to €80,000 per year in dairy processing are difficult to fill, he said.
Both farmers and co-ops are paying the price of regulatory certainty, referring to the potential loss of Ireland’s nitrates derogation as the “sword of Damocles hanging over the dairy industry”. In the Greek myth, Damocles was a courtier who was given a taste of the king’s power, only to find that he has a sword suspended above his head by a single hair, putting him in a precarious position.
Unless farmers and new entrants have certainty, they will not take on the risk of investing heavily on their farms,” Mulvihill warned.
“We’re the only country in the world where dairying can throw off a middle-class income in a high-wage economy,” he said.
“But at the moment what 22-year-old girl or guy is going to commit to investing, say, €80,000 of slurry storage if they don’t know if they will need it in two years’ time?” he asked.
“Logically, they are not going to do it.”
Mulvihill added that a “decade of anti-agriculture sentiment” had also dampened young people’s interest in working in the dairy industry and, while the industry has made huge strides in turning around water quality, regulatory policy uncertainty is a major pressure.
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