The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) grain committee has brought a draft discussion paper on native grain and feed ingredients to its national council.

There are three main elements to the document.

The first is that as part of the Bord Bia Sustainable Quality Assurance Schemes, a portion of feedstuffs fed to qualifying animals must contain a percentage of grains produced to the standard of the Irish Grain Assurance Scheme.

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The suggested percentage inclusion rate was not detailed. The document stated that in the event of a significant shortfall of qualifying grains then the threshold can be adjusted.

The suggestion presumably comes in an attempt to add value to Irish grain, which is more traceable and sustainable, with a lower carbon footprint than the majority of imports into the country.

In recent years, native grain has only accounted for less than one-third of total feed materials.

Over 1m tonnes of animal feed was imported from Mercosur countries in 2023 and 2024 and 650,000t from January to October 2025. Almost 450,000t of this was soybean meal.

Support for feed mills

There was also a suggestion to introduce a sustainable feed scheme funded by the Government on environmental and food security grounds.

The scheme would incentivise feed compounders which incorporate cereals with better sustainability or traceability credentials. They said that the funding could support storage grants and capital allowances on investments.

The draft proposal outlined that “such a scheme would be reliant on a fundamental behavioural change by feed compounders, which may not occur".

It was also noted that annual funding would be needed from Government, which would not be guaranteed.

Data surveys

A second proposal from the document was that: “The IFA believe[s] that the availability of data on the supply and demand of grain and feedstuffs in Ireland need[s] to be significantly improved going forward.

"The introduction of regular surveys on the consumption, demand and stocks of grains and feedstuffs by a public sector body would be of benefit to the wider tillage and feed industries.”

Bord Bia

Last week, the Irish Farmers Journal published a statement from Bord Bia which said: “While Bord Bia would like to give greater recognition to Irish grains, this is not a decision Bord Bia can make on its own. Neither can we mandate the use of Irish grain, as this is against EU state aid rules.”

Bord Bia said farm organisations will have to agree on any changes to the schemes.