One farm organisation has said that it would be “impossible” to assess the effectiveness of any emissions-reducing measures proposed under the Food Vision Beef and Sheep Group without “concrete commitments for extra funding”.
The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) has again said that it will “not accept any attempt to make sucklers the scapegoat for climate targets, nor will it accept the suckler sector being treated less favourably than the dairy sector”.
Edmund Graham, the association’s beef chairperson, was speaking after a meeting of the beef and sheep group yesterday (Monday, October 25), saying that the ICSA has not agreed to any of the proposed measures to reduce emissions.
“A stable national herd should be the primary goal of any strategy designed to help the global climate challenge, while at the same time having regard to the importance of a balanced outcome for rural communities,” he said.
“A key demand from ICSA is that farmers, including young farmers, must be able to establish or grow their businesses in the future.”
He continued: “[We] also made it clear that it is impossible to assess any measures in the absence of concrete commitments for extra funding for the sector.”
The ICSA beef chair highlighted the need to ensure that funding does not disadvantage farmers who wished to continue with sucklers.
According to the ICSA, the beef finishing sector should be the priority for public funding, and it is “unrealistic” to expect farmers to finish cattle at a younger age while beef price is falling.
“It would be reckless to decimate the national herd and then to see the meat industry import raw materials to supply markets, given that international demand will not change as a result of decisions taken in Ireland,” said Graham.
He also called for the genotyping of calves destined for the beef sector to be strongly incentivised, saying: “It is not practical to expect cattle farmers to take on calves that might not be economic to rear or fatten.
“There is plenty of evidence that the genetic differences between two animals can be the difference between profit and bankruptcy in beef farming,” he added.
The farmer representative said that yesterday’s meeting saw agreement that an interim report should be supplied to Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue on the understanding that it is not the final position of the group.
“It was further agreed that further impact analysis would be required before any progress could be made and that, in the beef sector, many, if not all of the proposals put forward by the [Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine] have a public funding implication,” Graham said.