Three issues need to be addressed as a matter of priority by the Government to avoid the worst of a potential fodder crisis – with access to credit top of the list – according to Jackie Cahill.
Stressing that such matters need to be dealt with as the back-end of the year beckons, the Fianna Fail spokesperson for food and horticulture listed: “There’s credit; there’s exports – we need to get as high a volume of cattle as we can out of the country; and then there’s imports of fodder.
“They are the three issues that need to be addressed.”
To outline the need for credit that is currently impacting on farmers, the Tipperary TD referenced Glanbia’s extended credit scheme, which was recently increased from €20 million to €30 million due to demand for the initiative.
The credit situation is dire out there; it’s going to get worse. We had a bad winter and a very costly spring and men needed a good year to try and get to grips on that.
“And, on the dairy side, you’re going to have a very large tax bill coming in October. My cows were getting 7kg of meal for the last seven to eight weeks. It was the level of meal feeding that they’d be getting in the depths of winter.
“Now they did perform well; milk production is on par with last year, milk production hasn’t dropped because people have fed cows to maintain production, in the hope that they’d get a good back end and maybe get a bit of milk in the back end.”
‘Crisis’
Cahill stressed that the problem was not limited to dairy farmers, however.
He said: “Pig men as well are in crisis; pig prices have dropped very substantially over the last three to four months and feed prices have gone up on the other side. Pig men are on serious financial preposition.
“And the other major problem that I see is people who would have year-and-a-half, especially dairy-type stock: I think there’s going to be an extremely bad market for them – if any market for them.
“I would appeal to the minister and Bord Bia – if they could get an outlet – if we could start shipping some of that Friesian steer that would traditionally be bought for feeding all year and finishing next spring or next June, July.
That would have a double benefit in that it would take cattle out of the system which would reduce fodder requirements in the country and it would bring competition back for those year-and-a-half cattle.
On the issue with banks, the TD said: “Now, banks will tell you we’re looking after farmers – that’s not the situation; they’re not looking after fellows and they’re not giving credit. That’s not the situation on the ground.
“The Minister for Finance announced in the 2018 Budget that there would be low-cost finance available; we’re in deep discussions for the next one, the 2019 Budget, and that money still hasn’t come on the table.
“What was promised in the 2018 Budget needs to be got out there immediately and he needs to at least double if not treble it in the next budget for 2019 at low rates of interest.”
Credit availability
Asked about the likelihood of banks being brought before the next Oireachtas Committee for Agriculture meeting, deputy Cahill said: “We have looked to have a meeting on the situation and the normal thing is to bring in the stakeholders who are most involved and have most access to the solution, so I imagine they will be brought in.
“We would have looked for this meeting and I’d be disappointed that it’s not happening until the first week in September.
“We’re now in the third week of August; whatever grass growth we’re going to get now is hard to measure but I’d have felt that whatever commitments were there, the Agri Committee should have met sooner.”
The deputy pointed to the success of the previous low-cost loan scheme offered under the 2017 Budget, noting that it was snapped up in days.
He added that, this year, things would be exacerbated by the hard weather conditions that engulfed the country all year.
“Last back-end, cattle went in the sheds in September, October; they were in extremely early. And you had all that huge cost.
You need a good year afterwards to try and take away those costs; instead of that you probably had the most costly summer in living memory.
“I don’t know how you’d put a figure on the credit demand that’s out there but it’s going to be huge,” Cahill concluded.