This Thursday saw the first public meeting hosted by the Department since late 2019.

The onset of COVID-19 mean the entire CAP process was conducted online, as far as farmers were concerned.

Of course, Minister McConalogue engaged in his extensive marts roadshow late last year, but that was essentially “a political engagement”, as one senior official put it.

This was more of a technical briefing, with an avalanche of information as to how the new CAP will work next year. There were no apologies for decisions made, no defences of options chosen or dismissed.

There will be 11 of these meetings, one of which will be an online webinar. I know it’s the busiest time of the year, and farmers are some days hard-pressed to see the news headlines while grabbing their dinner.

I am also acutely aware that it’s hard to worry about payments and schemes that will only kick off in payment terms late in 2023. Right now, that seems a world away in both farming terms and in relation to the wider world.

Watching the bombs rain down on the civilian population of Kyiv and Kharkiv, it seems self-absorbed to worry about our little businesses, but the reality is that farmers are genuinely worried.

Inputs have become almost unaffordable and potentially unavailable. Volatility is upon us, with inflation and rising interest rates, following decades of German-derived steadiness in the market.

Ireland went through a boom and a bust with interest rates staying remarkably low. It was one of the things that drove the Tiger, but it also helped us to cope with the crash that followed and emerge out the other end as a society.

We have a functional economy, although our housing market is utterly broken, particularly in Dublin.

Suddenly, all bets are off.

All that said, the CAP is of fundamental importance to Irish farming. And direct payments are of fundamental importance to all drystock and tillage farmers.

In that regard, there has been one outstanding question of deep significance, particularly for people who currently have high-value entitlements.

We know the exact effect of CRISS/frontloading and of eco schemes to the current basic payment, now to be known as the Basic Income Support Scheme (BISS). What wasn’t known was what effect convergence would have. Some guesstimates were made, but they were little more than conjecture

Now we can finally answer that question with a degree of certainty. The Department’s Fran Morrin revealed on Thursday night that a payments calculator has been prepared and uploaded on to the Department’s website. He confirmed to me afterwards that this will calculate the effect of convergence on payments each year between 2023 and 2026.

Three steps to heaven

You need three things to use the calculator. Firstly, you need the number of entitlements you hold. Secondly, you need the number of eligible hectares you are applying on (remember we’re at all times talking about next year not this year). Thirdly, you need the value of your entitlements. The value required is the gross value of the current basic payment plus greening. If you have entitlements with differing values, and many people do, the calculator allows for that.

Having entered those three pieces of information, you press the button and your fate will be revealed.

Last autumn, we examined a number of scenarios to see how CAP would affect farmers with different backstories.

We went all the way back to 2004, looking at people who gained very high initial payments, moderate ones, and lower-value entitlements.

We showed how some suckler farmers lost out; not because they were farming very extensively, but because they were selling young ’unpunched’ cattle rather than drawing down the premia on them.

And we showed how these farmers, who nursed a genuine and perhaps justified grievance over the Fischler decoupling reforms, could actually have lost out under the Ciolos package in 2014.

Tommy Kelly was our intensive cattle finisher on 50ha. He had generated massive payments during the reference years of 2000-2002, gaining €46,600 in 2005, the first year of decoupled payments. This amounted to over €900/ha.

In 2021, despite the cuts imposed by Ciolos, he was still getting €693/ha, a total of €34,650. In 2023, the CAP calculator shows a total payment, BISS, CRISS and eco-schemes included, of €24,205.50. It’s a loss of just over €10,000 in a single swoop. The per-hectare payment drops from €693 to €484.

And then, as we can see in the table, convergence works its magic. In each of the following three years, €1,626.50 is taken from Tommy’s payment pot. By 2026, his payment has been cut to €19,323. It’s still higher than the average payment, but he has lost a whopping €15,327 from his 2023 payment. It’s a cut of 44%, one that is bound to affect Tommy’s ability to pay top dollar for store cattle in the marts of 2026.

Paddy Murphy was the first farmer we modelled. He was calving 50 cows on 52ha, and claiming all the subs available on all his stock. Paddy generated an initial payment of €29,018- €558/ha.

In 2021, this had been adjusted downwards to €20,514, still a very decent €394.50/ha - way above the national average.

So what is happening Paddy’s payments? Next year will see his payment fall to €17,025. By 2026, it will have been shrunk to €15,461. That’s an overall cut of €5,053, a 25% cut in his payment.

Remember, farmers like Paddy, with 50 suckler cows, are making less than the average wage, direct payments included.

In a bad year, they make less than the minimum wage.

Pippa Hackett may yet see more part-time farmers, if indeed that is what she meant to say in her recent Seanad speech.

Tommy O’Brien was the bang average farmer. With 32ha, some of it commonage, 14 suckler cows and 100 ewes, he was doing as much as anyone could in the circumstances. Tommy initially gained €7,356 which works out at 239/ha. In 2021, this had edged up to €7,456, with any gains from the Ciolos reforms mostly lost to small budgetary cuts that affected almost all farmers.

The good news for Tommy is that he will gain more than €100 this time round. In 2023, he will receive €8,213, an increase of over 10% in his overall payment.

That’s the end of his gains, though. Each year, his payment will go up due to convergence, but only by €4.

So even though convergence is hammering Tommy Kelly and Paddy Murphy, our average farmer isn’t even gaining the price of a pint. It’s enough to buy about six kilos of Sulfacan. You could fertilise the lawn with it, I suppose.

The calculator is assuming that you will be in receipt of the eco-scheme payment. It is including a payment of €77/ha, which is the level that will be paid if 85% of farmers fulfil the criteria.

If more farmers apply and comply with the requirements of eco schemes, the payment will be lower. If every farmer participates, the payment will be about €66/ha on every eligible hectare included in your holding.

At Thursday night’s meeting, farmers were still calling for extra qualifying measures to the eight currently proposed, but that now seems unlikely. All the figures quoted above thus include eco-scheme payments.

You can view the calculator here.

Note: there is a health warning attached. The Department says there might still be changes to the final outcome, but this is the most accurate picture that can be provided at this point.