Former vice-president of CEJA (European Council of Young Farmers), Thomas Duffy has said that Ireland needs to maintain the derogation for farming to remain “viable”.
In Agriland’s AgriFocus podcast this week, Duffy said that with derogation, farmers should also continue to move away from “bad practices”.
At the moment, only Ireland and Denmark continue to have the derogation.
Duffy said that as a country, Ireland will need to have research ready to prove why the farming landscape is different.
“It’s going to be very challenging for any minister to go over and argue that Ireland is this exceptional country,” he said.
He added that the EU is looking at Ireland and knows it has one of the highest levels of water quality and permanent grassland, which it wants to “safeguard”.
Losing the derogation
Duffy said that if Ireland lost the derogation, farmers would buy up and lease out land, causing “conflict” between sectors.
He said that the tillage and beef sector would be “most at risk”, unless there was “major intervention”.
“We don’t want to go down a New Zealand style model, where basically every other sector is gone or pushed to the fringe, and it’s just dairy,” Duffy added.
He said that without the derogation, there is also concerns that the country would move away from grasslands, affecting biodiversity.
Biodiversity
On Duffy’s own family dairy farm in Co. Cavan, he had planned to invest in about an acre of biodiversity production, but said he “just can’t risk that” anymore, in case the derogation is lost.
“Land will begin being converted land, which is currently extensively farmed, very wet bottoms, wet bits, which is really good for biodiversity.
“We will lose those because we will have to renovate them.
“It kind of goes against what we’ve done in the last CAP, allowing farmers to not have to keep it in such good, agricultural environmental conditions and still receive payments on it,” Duffy said.