Teagasc’s National Farm Survey always attracts a lot of attention, as it reveals farm incomes across dairy, drystock and tillage farms. However, that narrow income information barely scratches the surface of the depth of insight the survey provides.

The 2021 sustainability report, just released, looks at a number of different perspectives, and reveals many surprises.

For instance, no one will be shocked to hear that dairy incomes are higher than other sectors “by a multiple” and that the gap is growing.

However, as the report states “when allowance is made for the amount of labour required in different systems, and income is expressed on a per labour unit basis” tillage can be considered as comparable to dairying.

In other words, tillage farms make as much as dairy farms per hour worked. This explains a lot. It especially explains why dairy farmers chase scale.

Being a one-person dairy operation is no more profitable than being a one-person tillage operation. But as a farm gets bigger, the expectation would be that the farm owner would get a higher slice of the “average profit per labour unit” than farm employees, or younger family members, in many cases.

The big issue on many dairy farms is sourcing this employment. What profit/labour unit and hours worked don’t reflect is the intensity of the work. Dairy farms around calving time are a pretty intense work environment, physically very demanding, with long hours for weeks with little respite.

Struggle to find staff

It’s been getting harder to source casual or seasonal labour in farming full stop. Contractors and larger tillage operations are also struggling to find staff.

So it isn’t surprising that dairy farms’ “main operators” (the man or woman with whom the buck stops) work longer hours than farmers in other enterprises.

It might shock some farmers who are drystock and part-time to hear that is still true when you add in the hours worked off-farm by part-time farmers.

For the drystock sector, income levels and isolation are issues.

Farmers without off-farm work are more vulnerable to both.

However, the levels of work stress on dairy farms are now as big a danger to wellbeing as isolation could ever be.

Sheep farmers are often considered the poor relations of Irish farming, but this report indicates that cattle farmers are much more economically vulnerable. Sheep farms are also more environmentally sustainable, according to the metrics used in this analysis.

The beef herd, for so long the epitome of Irish farming, has never been more vulnerable.