What a difference a few years make. The biannual Teagasc open day at Grange last week was an outstanding event accompanied by an excellent technical and marketing book.

Earlier this week, Teagasc followed on with its annual national farm survey results for the 2025 farming year. The end conclusion from both events has to be that while supports are welcome, it’s the price for the product that counts.

Output from the bovine – milk and beef – accounts for about 75% of total Irish farm output. The price of both is the major factor affecting farm income.

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Average dairy farm income in 2023 was €745/ha, in 2025 it reached €2,215/ha – though that needed the labour input of 1.87 individuals. The trends on the beef side were similar, with average income per hectare going from €416/ha in 2023 to €976/ha in 2025.

While milk prices have fluctuated widely over the years, beef prices have been low for a long time, reflected in a slide in cattle numbers both here, in the UK and on the continent. As recently as 2018, the average Irish beef price was €3.90/kg. In 2025, it has been put at €7.50/kg and while costs are much higher, nevertheless the income increases have been real.

Side by side with those increases, the contribution of the total range of farm supports has reduced significantly; with 72% of farm income in 2025 compared with a figure of 226% in 2023.

In other words, without supports, cattle incomes would have been more than totally wiped out in 2023.

On dairy farms, which had always been more reliant on market returns, supports accounted for just 16% of farm income in 2025 compared with 44% in 2023.

The intense volatility of income to which farmers uniquely are being exposed to is having predictable consequences. A majority of all farm types now have the farmer or his/her spouse with an off-farm income, even on dairy farms where only 14% of farmers have an off-farm job, 53% of spouses have off-farm employment.

The level of off-farm employment is highest on tillage farms where a remarkable 74% of farms have one or both spouses engaged in off-farm work.

2026 promises to be a much more difficult year. We are seeing the effects of international low cost producers on the beef side replicate the penetration of the British and European markets as we have seen on the tillage side since the Fischler MacSharry reforms, while world dairy markets are being affected by low grain prices stimulating extra milk output.

We are at the start of another fundamental CAP reform. The survival let alone the prosperity of European farming depends on either limiting the access of cheaper third country produce onto European markets or increased budgetary support.

Ultimately, the choices are clear but not simple.