The current Teagasc advisory model was established in 1988 at a time of crisis in farming.

The old model of a county-by-county-based advisory service was inadequate to deal with the changing demands of Ireland’s farmers.

The 1980s was a time of rapid structural change in the aftermath of Ireland’s accession to the EU.

The big benefit from the formation of Teagasc was that it brought together both research and advice under the one umbrella.

Once again, farming in Ireland is undergoing massive change.

Growing pains in the dairy sector along with stagnation and a lack of profit in the drystock and tillage sectors have been the story of the last decade.

Rising input prices, Brexit, climate change, labour shortages, environmental restrictions and CAP reform are major challenges facing farming now and into the future.

But is the national farm advisory service fit for purpose to deal with these challenges and steer farmers in the right direction?

Structure

The Teagasc advisory service rests within the knowledge transfer (KT) directorate headed up by Stan Lalor.

There are two parts to knowledge transfer – advisory and education. Dermot McCarthy is head of advisory and Ann Marie Butler is head of education. The advisory service is split into 12 regions, each with a regional manager reporting directly to Dermot McCarthy.

These regional managers are responsible for the delivery of the advisory programme in their region.

Everyone in the region reports to them, from senior advisers to clerical officers.

Typically, each regional manager will be responsible for 30 or 40 staff. Each region has its own annual business plan and has targets to meet in terms of income from advisory fees and expenditure in the form of expenses, overtime and operating costs.

Separate to the advisory service are the Teagasc dairy, drystock and tillage specialists. These is a team of around 20 expert advisers whose core function is to transfer research results to farmers and advisers. They perform in-service training, support advisers in their role and organise open days and events for farmers.

Joe Patton is the head of the dairy specialist team, Pearse Kelly heads up the beef team, Michael Gottstein heads up the sheep team and Michael Hennessy is over tillage. As the specialist teams are part of the research directorate and not the advisory directorate, they report to the head of animal and grassland research, Pat Dillon at Moorepark, or John Spink in Oakpark in the case of Michael Hennessy.

Objectives

It’s important to note that the objectives of the Teagasc adviser are not necessarily always aligned with those of the specialist teams. Advisers report to their regional manager, not to specialists. So while the specialists may wish to steer advisers in one direction or another, they are not responsible the work of advisers, with only a very limited role in performance appraisal of existing advisers.

These tasks are the function of the area manager, who may or may not have specialist knowledge in the adviser’s field. For example, most of the area managers are former dairy or drystock advisers or specialists. When promoted to area manager, they get responsibility for the delivery of advice for all sectors in their region, even sectors they may have no knowledge of.

Arguably an issue of greater importance is the twin objectives of the regional area manager. On the one hand they want to deliver an important advisory service to all farmers in the region, both clients and non-clients and on the other hand they need to balance the books such as bringing in revenue from schemes and limiting expenditure to stay on budget.

The area manager sets the budget for what revenue each adviser needs to bring in. This revenue comes from client fees. Most of the farmer clients’ interactions with their Teagasc adviser is for scheme work, such as BPS, nitrates derogation plans and agri-environment schemes.

The number of Teagasc clients increased by 23% between the years 2004 and 2006 after the Nitrates Directive was implemented in 2005

These schemes, particularly the Nitrates Directive, have been a cash cow for the Teagasc advisory service.

The number of Teagasc clients increased by 23% between the years 2004 and 2006 after the Nitrates Directive was implemented in 2005. Advisory numbers peaked in 2006 at 43,000 clients and have remained relatively stable in the intervening years, with 42,438 clients in 2020.

However, there has been significant change in the number of advisers on the ground. In 2000, there were 400 advisers servicing the needs of 37,000 clients, giving an adviser to client ratio of 1:93. By 2010, the number of advisers had dropped by 25% to 300 and the number of clients had increased to 42,000, giving an adviser to client ratio of 1:140. The last decade has seen a further reduction in adviser numbers.

The service reached its lowest ebb in 2014, when the number of advisers dropped to 231. By 2020 this had increased to 242 but the adviser to client ratio is still historically high at one adviser to 175 clients. In practice, this means that more of the adviser’s time is spent administrating schemes and less and less is spent in an advisory role, helping farmers with on-farm technical issues.

The peak time for schemes is in late spring, which coincides with the busiest and most important times on farms

While certain scheme work in some areas has been contracted out to third parties, such as TAMS and nitrates derogations, the adviser is still the one responsible and liaising with the farmer.

The peak time for schemes is in late spring, which coincides with the busiest and most important times on farms.

In terms of costs, a typical dairy farmer with between 33 and 100 cows who is a member of a discussion group and in a nitrates derogation is charged €645/year by Teagasc. A typical suckler farmer with 30 cows keeping all progeny to beef, not in derogation but in a discussion group will be charged €435/year. The lowest-cost Teagasc plan is €170/year which includes BPS application but no farm visits or discussion group membership.

Service

The Teagasc advisory remit is to provide a service to clients and non-clients in order to advance the entire farming sector.

Teagasc had 42,438 paid advisory clients in 2020 which represents 33% of all farmers applying to the Basic Payment Scheme.

The other almost 90,000 farmers who are not clients of Teagasc use private consultants or apply to the BPS themselves.

In 2020, a total of 9,630 farmers took part in 685 Teagasc-organised discussion groups – a 15% drop on the year previous.

In 2019, 7,936 farmers completed a profit monitor, which is a 22% drop on the year previous.

Both the reduction in discussion groups and the reduction in profit monitors can be attributed to the ending of the Knowledge Transfer scheme, which paid farmers for attending discussion groups.

Teagasc received €3.7m annually from its participation in this scheme.

At this stage, 19% of Teagasc clients and just 6% of all farmers complete a profit monitor annually.

Another metric that can be used to measure the success or otherwise of the advisory programme is through counting the number of farmers measuring grass.

Improving grassland productivity through regular measurement of pasture has long been extolled as the gold standard in grassland management.

However, just 1,739 or 1.5% of all livestock farmers in the country measure grass on a regular basis (more than 20 times per year).

The vast majority (1,623) of those measuring grass regularly are dairy farmers.

This leaves just one hundredth of one per cent of drystock farmers who routinely measure grass.

Comment

Radical overhaul needed

In my view, the advisory service needs a radical overhaul. The first place to start is with the reporting structure for advisers. There needs to be a closer relationship between the adviser and the specialist.

It’s not fair or reasonable to expect the area manager to perform this duty

The adviser should report to the specialist and the specialist should be responsible for performance appraisal, promotion, discipline, etc.

It’s not fair or reasonable to expect the area manager to perform this duty, given their existing duties and the number of staff under their control.

There is an inherent conflict between delivering a good advisory service and bringing in sufficient revenue.

Allowing advisers to go out on farm giving advice or attending in-service training has both an opportunity cost and a real cost in terms of expenses.

While scheme work is essential, for it to take priority over technical advancement is a poor use of resources

The flip side is having highly skilled technical advisers form filling doesn’t advance farmer technical knowledge.

While scheme work is essential, for it to take priority over technical advancement is a poor use of resources. It seems to me that it’s being run to stay within budget – meeting the needs of clients and non-clients is almost secondary.

Specialists should be responsible for teams of advisers. Each specialist should be responsible for six or seven advisers in their region in terms of programme delivery, supervision and performance appraisal.

Each team and each adviser within that team should be measured in terms of their delivery of the advisory programme such as the number of clients measuring grass, profit monitors completed, etc.

As the State-owned farm advisory service, Teagasc should own this space. In my view, the organisation is failing to deliver on its potential.

External reviews of each advisory region since 2013 have failed to identify any major problems, yet it’s not delivering for most farmers. If Teagasc advisory is to remain relevant a radical shake-up is required.