Balance needs to be restored to Irish agriculture between the different sectors – with coupled payments for suckler cows and ewes seen as key to achieving this – and protecting the smaller farmer, the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) has said.
Putting forward its submission for the consultation of Ireland’s next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan, the ICSA outlined its views on the coupled payment in particular, highlighting how this would be a more effective way of ensuring that money went to farmers actively engaged in agriculture,
Speaking to Agriland on the topic, ICSA general secretary Eddie Punch said:
“The first thing is we have to have balance in Irish agriculture.
“What you see year after year in the national farm survey is the dairy sector is powering ahead – and fair play to it – but real struggles for the other sectors to make anywhere close to a viable living out of it; or even a part-time viable living.”
Drystock farming and coupled payments
Highlighting that dairy farming is four times more profitable than the cattle and sheep sectors, Punch stressed that as a result, drystock farmers are much more reliant on direct payments – meaning they are disproportionately impacted by changes to CAP payments.
“There are some reasons why convergence offers fairness for people with low payments but it’s an inefficient system, we think, of getting money to the people who are actively producing beef and lamb,” the ICSA general secretary said.
“When you see someone with, say 40 suckler cows, maybe a single payment of €12,000 being cut as a result of convergence, that’s just not right.
“We have to try and get money back to those sorts of people. We need to try and get money to people on low payments as well but who are active,” he stressed.
Punch outlined that the flexibility is present under EU rules to allow 13% for coupled payments under Pillar I, which is why the ICSA has put forward its proposal for coupled suckler and ewe premiums, capped at 40 suckler cows and 250 ewes.
The capped figures, he said, would allow the proposal to be put forward as an alternative to the Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS), which would redistribute payments anyway.
“The member state must apply CRISS – unless it can show that it has an alternative way of getting money to the most vulnerable sectors. By delivering it to suckler and sheep farmers who are low, low income sectors, and then by saying it’s not for very large-scale farmers, this is targeted,” he said.
As an alternative for CRISS (which would redistribute 10% of the payments ceiling) the coupled payments would require 13% of this, according to ICSA estimates; this would mean a net 3% deduction to deliver a payment of about €120/cow for sucklers and about €16/ewe for sheep.
In addition, this could potentially be a variable premium depending on the numbers of sucklers and ewes with registered offspring overall, he said, adding:
“Our allocation is, of the 13% – it’s about €154 million – we’ve suggested €110 million for the suckler sector and €44 million for the ewe sector. On current numbers that’s just over €120/cow and €16/ewe. If the number of cows goes up, the payment comes down; if the number of cows goes down, the payment goes up.”
Asked whether such coupled payments proposals would arrest the decline in the number of suckler cows in the country, Punch said:
“Balance is really important – but I don’t think we should get too hung up on people getting out of sucklers if there are other people either getting into sucklers or are growing their herds.
“In the end the most important thing is not how many suckler cows we have in Ireland but that everybody that wants to have suckler cows is making money out of them. That’s really the critical point.
“I think the capping was a very clumsy proposal and it rightly made a lot of people angry. It was only a kite flown by the Department of Agriculture.
“Where there is some sense at a national level that we have some targets to meet on the emissions front and all of that, what we’ve done is trying to get the balance right, firstly in terms of the suckler herd itself.
“We also have a proposal that if you’re 75 or 80 years-of-age and you’ve 10 suckler cows, let’s be honest – that’s a health and safety issue.
“We’ve suggested that we give some money to those guys if they agree not to breed any more cattle for the next five years.
“That helps to keep a lid on suckler numbers and it also gives them a nice way of getting a few bob into their pocket and they can continue to graze a few bullocks for the summer. It’s not a case of ‘you’re out’; it’s just that you can’t breed the cattle.
“What we’re trying to get is this scenario where people who want to take it easier can do that and at the same time there’s plenty of room for a younger farmer, if he or she wants to go from 20 cows to 40 cows, there’s no problem,” the ICSA general secretary concluded.