Next year will be defined by soaring farm input prices and policymakers at national and EU level will have to simply step up with measures to address the issue, according to the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA).

ICMSA president Pat McCormack warned farm input price inflation is “completely eroding” output price improvements.

The Tipperary dairy farmer made his comments following the release of the Central Statistics Office (CSO) agricultural price indices for October 2021 on Tuesday.

Inflation

McCormack said: “The output price index increasing by 14.1% from October 2020 to October 2021 would normally be a good news story, but the input price index increase of 15.7% had actually ensured that farmers were worse off."

Looking ahead to 2022, McCormack highlighted that higher farm input costs were already in the pipeline.

He described some of the increases including that of fertiliser prices up 64.5%, energy prices up 29.7% and feed prices up to 18.5% as “astronomic”.

“[The] ICMSA believes that the actual increase in prices could well be higher than even these figures.”

Immediate attention

McCormack said: “It’s very obvious that these input price hikes are unsustainable and will require the immediate attention of our national and EU politicians.

“They need to examine the options available either to immediately decrease input prices to realistic levels, raise output prices to compensate for input cost increases or else provide support through direct support or the taxation system.”

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