Farm organisations have raised concerns following a publication by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) which shows that the agricultural operating surplus declined by 36% last year.
The agricultural operating surplus declined by €1.7 billion to €3.0 billion last year, according to preliminary estimates for 2023 published by the CSO today (Monday, March 11).
This is mainly due to a sharp decline in the value of milk and cereals. Milk prices fell by 26% and, when combined with a 4% drop in volumes, the value of milk fell by 30% to €3.5 billion.
ICMSA
The president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA), Denis Drennan said “the dashboard lights are turning red and blinking fast” following a “collapse” in operating surplus.
Although the value of milk could be “perceived to have ‘spiked’ in 2021”, the fall since was due to “policy disfunction” as it was to “market sentiment”, the ICMSA president said.
Latest CSO agricultural data shows that the value of milk grew from €2.75 billion in 2020 to €3.39 billion in 2021, before increasing further to €5.02 billion in 2022.
“These figures should make every Department [of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM)] official and rural TD sit up straight and focus very quickly,” the ICMSA president said.
“Can you imagine the outcry if, say, the value of Irish pharma or tech had collapsed by 36% in [one year]? The dashboard lights are turning red and blinking fast.
“It’s just a question now of whether the government wants to see them or whether we wait for the engine of rural Ireland to be damaged beyond repair,” Drennan said.
He said that, over the last two years, “avoidable structural harm” was being done to the dairy sector through “contradictory and fundamentally unsound policy and restrictions”.
Most of this damage arose from “ideological animosity” to farming and a “profound misunderstanding” of workable timelines around farming, according to the ICMSA president.
He said the “lamentable performance” arose from a “mistaken perception” that climate progress could only be achieved at the expense of farming and Ireland’s food sector.
“This is is not a binary, this is not a choice between sustainability and food, both are attainable and, in fact, both are being attained,” according to the ICMSA president.
“But the constant haranguing and deliberate reliance on outdated data and impossible timelines is being weaponised into giving an erroneous impression,” Drennan said.
IFA
The president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Francie Gorman said that latest CSO figures highlight the price volatility that Irish farmers are “exposed to” in the current market.
“Latest CSO figures only further highlight the pressures that farmers are facing at farmgate. There is a price squeeze still taking place and margins are eroding on farms,” he said.
Commenting on the latest figures by the CSO, Gorman said: “The shock to the system of spiralling input costs, caused primarily by the Ukraine war, is still having a big impact.
“Others in the food chain have to recognise the pressures on farmers. They cannot expect quality food to arrive on supermarket shelves at a loss to the primary producer.”
“Farmers cannot be taken for granted”, he said and added that the government and the European Commission have to “take this into account” when it comes to designing farm policy.