IFA animal health chair Pat Farrell welcomed the contribution of the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue at the TB Forum meeting last week.

He said the minister directed his officials to provide the forum members with a draft TB strategy, and promised to initiate bilateral meetings with the farm organisations as a matter of urgency, to develop an agreed approach in achieving the eradication of TB in the shortest feasible time frame.

Minister of state Martin Heydon also attended the TB Forum.

“This is an important first step, but the real work of agreeing on a programme that reduces TB levels and the impact of controls on farms is only starting,” he said.

The IFA chair said the Department also agreed to address the issue of the letters and blacklisting of farmers in these bilateral discussions.

It is incredible that a measure introduced in 1995 will now be extended to 2025

The decision by the European Commission to prolong anti-dumping measures on ammonium nitrate from Russia for another five years is a further blow to European agriculture, as Irish farmers will continue to face high-priced nitrogen fertiliser in a market devoid of fair competition.

“It is incredible that a measure introduced in 1995 will now be extended to 2025 to assure and protect the profitability of European fertiliser producers, while farmers face a further decline in income due to higher costs. We believe that if this proposal is unchanged, the extension of the anti-dumping measure will cost European farmers up to €3bn in additional costs (AN and CAN fertiliser),” said IF president Tim Cullinan. “The case put forward by the Commission was full of conjecture and referred to a possible threat of dumping on the European market, with the product ‘likely to spill over to the Union market’, but with no concrete evidence.”

Anti-dumping duties are an additional charge for companies trying to export product into the European Union – where the Commission decides that the price is below cost and dumping is taking place – on top of a customs duty of 6.5% and transport costs.

We are paying over the odds for fertiliser in Ireland and Europe

Ammonium nitrate from Russia is charged an additional €32.71/t and, as a result, this product is not competitive, does not enter the market in significant quantities, and European manufacturers have a closed and protected market to themselves.

“We are paying over the odds for fertiliser in Ireland and Europe. Even when natural gas costs decrease, the Commission believes a time lag of five months is acceptable before fertiliser prices show a decrease. Since June 2019, gas prices have declined by 66%, but ammonium nitrate prices have only fallen 19%.”

Cullinan said: “The Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski has not replied to my letter sent to him in July on this matter. We need to see him come out and defend farmers’ livelihoods by demanding a fairer market for fertiliser inputs.

“This decision achieves just the opposite.”

The IFA lodged a reply before the deadline last Monday.