The Organic Farming Scheme in its present form is completely biased in favour of bigger farmers to the detriment of smaller operators and needs to be urgently reviewed, according to Padraic Conneally of the Organic Farmers Representative Body.
Conneally and members of the group were speaking in front of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture this week where he presented a submission on organic farming to the committee.
The group’s submission outlined a range of issues where there needs to be change in organic farming, including the introduction of a tillage payment and calling for certification to be carried out by Bord Bia.
Conneally said that in order to give organic farmers parity with conventional farmers in the GLAS scheme, the first 20ha of land should be front-loaded at a rate of €315/ha.
A financial comparison by the group shows that a conventional farmer under the low-input/hay meadow action in GLAS will €3,140 on 10ha over five years. Compared to this figure, organic farmers receive €1,700, the comparison found.
Conneally said that the group is also calling for a tillage payment of €450/ha for up to 5ha in order to reduce their dependency on imported feeds during the winter months.
One licence to cover the term of the Organic Farming Scheme
“Annual licencing is cumbersome and extremely expensive. Anything between 9-25% of the organic payment has to be paid to the certification bodies.
“One licence should cover the term of the Organic Farming Scheme.
“For example, a farmer with 12ha pays €2,200 to certification bodies, a farmer with 30ha has to pay €3,000 and a farmer with 50ha pays €3,100 to cert bodies.”
The certification bodies not only collect fees from farmers they also collect fees from factories, co-ops, marts, butchers, branding etc.
“They are also funded by the Department [of Agriculture].
The group also called for a risk-based assessment once a farmer is fully converted to organics and on the issue of payments, for all scheme monies to be delivered in the same calendar year.
The subject of the terms and conditions of the scheme being changed on an annual basis by the certification bodies also came up at the meeting.
Conneally said that the group suggests that an independent office be available to organic farmers to verify the necessity of some of these conditions, which frankly it finds ridiculous.
“For example, the new rule regarding bedding of slatted accommodation. We disagree with this new ruling and we want to have this independently assessed.”
We find that on occasion that we are participating in a somewhat different scheme to the one we signed up for.
On the final point in its submission the group said that agriculture is one of the few sectors that does not have access to the Labour Court.
“The fact that no independent forum such as the Labour Court is available for the sector is putting farmers in a position where they can be subjected to unfair treatment by the Department and other organisations.”
‘Little being implemented for organic farmers’
Ahead of the submission by Conneally, Chairman of the Organic Farmers Representative Body, Padraic Finnegan said that the group came before the committee in October 2015 to highlight major problems with the Organic Farming Scheme.
“We were very happy with the recommendations of the committee but to date little or none of those have been implemented.
“We sought to have all the monies paid inside the calendar year, the Joint Committee recommended that the Department ensure that no payments were delayed.”
However, the outcome for various reasons has meant that a lot of payments are still delayed – we’re at a loss as to why that is the case.
He said that the committee also recommended that the Department investigate whether it would be more efficient to have one streamline body granting organic status, instead of numerous bodies, preferably Bord Bia.
This would also see the registration fees reduced – this was not implemented, he said.
“On inspections, it was sought to have a risk-based inspection put in place rather than the present arrangement where certification bodies inspect organic farmers every year.
“The committee recommended that the Department attempt to reduce the duplication of inspections by making Bord Bia the certification body – this was also not implemented.”