A farmer has said he is disappointed as “there is absolutely nothing for us” in Budget 2024, criticising Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue for letting the sector down.
He said more is needed to help farmers after a very bad year which saw high costs for feed and milk prices plummet.
Pat O’Brien, who has a farm of 70 cows near Tullamore in Co Offaly, said “there’s nothing, nothing, in it for farmers”.
He added: “Look it, there’s a finite resource there, and there’s a lot of ministers around the table shouting for their sector but unfortunately we have one of the weakest ministers going.
“He’s possibly one of the worst we ever had. That’s my honest opinion – he was a third choice, there was a reason for that.”
He said energy credits will help him overall, but said that if farmers had been the only ones affected by energy price hikes “we mightn’t have got that either”.
Mr O’Brien said dairy farmers “were on top of the world” last year, but this year price hikes were “starting to bite now” with feed and fertiliser reducing only marginally as milk prices drop.
He said that this year, massive increases in costs were counteracted by the increases in prices for their product.
With high electricity and oil prices expected to impact families again this winter, he expressed concern about how it would affect his single-income family.
He said: “The government has been filling us with platitudes for years – when it comes to action it’s very thin on the ground.”
He said the nitrates derogation, which reduces the amount of organic nitrates that can be used per hectare from 250kg to 220 from January, was “quotas by another name and is particularly harsh on the smaller farmer”.
The measure is being introduced in response to poor water quality recorded in Ireland.
Both the nitrates limitation from the EU and land-use review was “a double whammy” for farmers, he said.
“The guys with 50-150 cows, those are the guys that are really going to be hit.”
“The guys with the 500 or 600 cows, which fall into the bottom category, and they could even expand,” he said.
He said there was nothing in the budget to compensate farmers for the nitrates derogation, despite ministers indicating that they wanted to support farmers worst affected by the reduction.
He added: “Actions speak louder than words and actions haven’t been taken yet. Platitudes are very cheap, very cheap. They can make promises but it’s the delivery that counts.”
Asked what more Budget 2024 could have done to help farmers, he said that a fund to help small farmers hit by the nitrate limitation, more resources so that grants for slurry storage can be activated faster and to more farmers, and a farm management deposit scheme.
“There are guys only being cleared now for (slurry storage) grants announced last year. Guys can’t start these projects now, it’s the spring summer that you need these things.
“We need a fund to mitigate the nitrate reduction from 250 to 220 (kgs N/ha).
“The guy who is being penalised for water quality is the guy who has been milking cows all his life. The problem is that the guy who has been there all his life is penalised the most.
“We’ve been campaigning for years for a deposit scheme where farmers could draw down money in bad years,” he added.
The scheme, which the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has called for in its pre-Budget submission, would allow farmers to put income into an account in the year the profits were made, but it would not be taxed until the farmer decides to use it.
It suggested that the Family Farm Fairness Mechanism (FFFM) would have a limit of 30,000 euro per annum, and could be overseen by the Revenue Commissioners.
“It’s like a lifebuoy, it’s there when it’s needed,” Mr O’Brien said, who is the ICMSA’s Offaly representative. “These bad years don’t come often but when they do, they’re very bad.”
Among the agriculture measures emphasised in the budgetary speeches to the Dail on Tuesday was more than 700 million euro in agri-environmental schemes such as the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme and the Areas of Natural Constraint Scheme.
On food production in general, he addsed “The milk or the beef we produce, we get a paltry sum for it but everyone else along the line is getting a better sum from it.
“If the powers that be knew more about food production they wouldn’t be half as anxious to push through this Mercosur deal.”
