Students need to be taught in their Green Cert how to start a conversation around succession at home with their parents or whoever they are farming with, a Kerry Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) meeting has heard.

Speaking at the meeting in Tralee on Thursday, Macra Kerry chair and IFA member Mark Riordan said students need to learn at agricultural college how to approach succession discussions.

Addressing Teagasc director Frank O’Mara, who spoke at the meeting, Riordan said: “You could introduce to the curriculum in the colleges about soft skills, talking about the handover. We’re not trying to push out our mothers, our fathers, our grandparents. We’re not trying to do that.

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“We want to see the best for them too, but sometimes the hardest part of that is actually just having the conversation on the ground,” he said.

Retirement scheme

Generational renewal in farming was brought up several times at the meeting, including by Kerry IFA chair Jason Fleming, who highlighted the need for a workable retirement scheme.

“We need a proper retirement scheme. The last one we had I thought it was a fairly good scheme. There was about €10,000 of a payment and I think it was a 10-year scheme. I actually availed of it myself.

“There has to be something like that again, another retirement scheme very similar to that. There was only one pitfall, where mom and dad that were retiring couldn’t help out on the farm. That was the only downfall, they were afraid to go out and give a hand,” Fleming added.

Answering questions from the floor on Teagasc’s plans to assist generational renewal, O’Mara highlighted his organisation’s succession clinics and also said Teagasc aims to do more on succession.

“We’re going to try to up our game in terms of supporting people who want to get into the conversation within the family around succession.

“Bring in the other people, the solicitor and the accountant if it’s the time for that and act as the person who might pull those various strands together,” he stated.