The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has warned that supermarket shelves may go empty if poultry producers’ costs are not recovered.
IFA poultry chair, Nigel Sweetnam, said farmers won’t continue to place day old birds or layer hens unless their costs are recovered.
The consequences may mean that shelves will go empty in the supermarkets, he said.
Negotiations have been taking place with processors and egg packers as part of the IFA’s campaign to recover farmers’ costs from the marketplace.
Sweetnam said producers can no longer get credit and cannot afford to pay their energy bills.
“The war in Ukraine has driven feed and energy prices to unprecedented levels, meaning that in the case of the chicken processors, there are additional feed and energy costs which need to be covered, before they pass back the required increase to farmers,” he said.
“The increase offered by the processors and egg packers, from their share of what they were able to get from the marketplace, is far from what producers need,” he said.
Vice chair of the IFA Poultry Committee, Brendan Soden said producers are suffering and losing money.
Without an immediate increase in the wholesale retail price, to be passed back to egg and chicken producers, the entire sector is in jeopardy, he said.
“What we produce is top quality, but at prices which are not sustainable. We intend to highlight the absolute necessity for our costs to be recovered from the food chain immediately,” he said.
Pig sector
Meanwhile, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, is considering proposals to establish an enhanced pig-stability fund to alleviate the financial pressure on pig farmers.
In the wake of a pig-farmer protest outside the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) last week, the IFA, Meat Industry Ireland and the Irish Grain and Feed Association submitted a proposal to the minister for a a €100 million support package for the pig sector.
The plan proposes a “50-50 private-public partnership” to be funded through €50 million of state money, and another €50 million put on a long-term mortgage of €1/pig.
Responding to a recent parliamentary question in the Dáil, the minister said:
“My department is currently reviewing the proposal and is engaging with stakeholders in this context, and on the situation in the pig sector in general.”
However, he previously stated that the ask from the IFA “was massive”.