Productive farmers in the southeast say they have been sold out in the new CAP plan by Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue.

At a sometimes heated CAP information meeting held in the Seven Oaks Hotel in Carlow on Monday night, farmers from Carlow, Kilkenny, Laois and Wicklow had their say.

Attendees on the night were brought through the detail of the new CAP, its schemes and the payment avenues for farmers.

Criticising Minister McConalogue for his “lack of vision” on the CAP, Henry Burns from Mountmellick, Co Laois, said: “He went around and played pure politics with this, threw it out there for everyone and let the thing just go up in the air and now look what we’re doing.

“[The Minister] is coming up with all sorts of crazy schemes to try and get people growing crops and producing food. You couldn’t make it up.”

Laois farmer Henry Burns outlining his concerns to Department officials on Monday night.

Burns called for the postponement of the CAP plan. He asked how will “the money that is flowing out of this region” due to convergence be replaced.

“If you don’t replace that, you won’t have the production, so you won’t have the farmers and you won’t have the food. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

Productive farmers

The productivity of farmers in the southeast was the theme of the majority of the concerns of farmers on the night, all of whom feel they have been hard done by with convergence.

Department official and chair of the meeting Francis Morrin received backlash over his explanation that a sum of €11m a year, out of a €1.2bn CAP budget, will be redistributed from the southeast.

John Kehoe from Rathvilly, Co Carlow, said the “net effect” of this €11m is that “people that are in this room here tonight are going to see a 20%, a 30% and a 40% reduction in their income”.

He warned that it was “completely wrong” for Morrin to make the comment and refer to it as a small amount of money.

Kehoe said: “That’s a huge amount of a reduction in anyone’s income and you should apologise for that comment. It’s very, very sore in a productive county.

“We now have a CAP policy which is in complete reverse. The more productive you are, the more you are going to take from us.”

He said that under the new CAP, if a farmer has “100ac today and 40 ewes” they will get “everything you want to get”.

He claimed the Minister and the Department don’t understand that if all farmers “move to 40 ewes per 100ac, we starve everyone in Europe”.

“The most productive farmers in this county and this province are going to be penalised for being productive and there should at least be an understanding of the implication that has,” he said.

Impact

A number of farmers outlined the exact impact the new CAP plan will have on their farm incomes.

John Murphy, a farmer in Inistioge, Co Kilkenny, said that under a “seriously flawed CAP” on his “modest enough holding between 2023 and 2027”, he’ll be “down between €60,000 and €70,000”.

Murphy said: “I came here tonight, although resigned to my faith and disgusted with this Minister who has decided to sell out productive farming, hoping that I’d see some opportunities in Pillar II to recoup some of that money and, sadly, I’m not seeing anything.”

He described how “like everyone in this room, I’m all for environment”, but said he was “disgusted that the eco scheme that I hoped to fully support was used as a flattening mechanism”.

“That should not have happened and I feel very bitter about that,” he said.

Discrimination

Murphy said the CAP will be hitting him and his family hard.

“Because I’m a full-time farmer, I don’t have any other source of income other than the farm and my basic payment. So, I’ll miss it."

He criticised the details of the AECM scheme that had been presented to the farmers in attendance and said there is “no way that any farmer in my county in Kilkenny can get a maximum [AECM] payment”.

“That’s discrimination against Kilkenny farmers and it’s got to be addressed. The same thing I’m assuming applies to Carlow, to Wexford, to Laois, to other south Leinster and some of the more productive Munster counties and it’s not good enough and it’s not acceptable.”

“You’ve made the [environmental schemes] unattractive to the productive farmers who are going to be crucified going forward. That needs to be addressed.”

Henry Burns added to these comments, saying: “There should be at least equality. Why can’t a guy in a productive area that has more to probably achieve on the environment, get the higher payment on the environmental [scheme], to at least try and get back some of his money.

“It’s a disaster for lads that are getting up in the morning and that are trying to do their best to try and produce food. The backwardness of this, the [lack of] imagination and the lack of vision [from] a Minister for Agriculture, I have never seen.”

Fodder

A number of farmers also drew attention to what they described as mixed messaging and “changing policies” on the need for farmers to now increase production of grain and fodder in light of the war in Ukraine.

Carlow farmer John Kehoe said: “Here we have now, a Department that’s come out and looked for us to grow more grain, fodder beet and forage maize.

"You’ve turned to the productive farmer to go do it. You now have an eco scheme next year where you won’t even allow fodder beet or forage maize as a break crop.

“Food security is not going to be achieved by hitting the most productive and then turning around and asking them to go and produce.”

Department officials, who repeatedly said they were there to “listen”, committed to bring the concerns shared on the new CAP back to their relevant colleagues.

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