Ireland is ranked in ninth position in a new European Union (EU) report measuring agricultural labour productivity last year.
Extraordinary inflationary pressures dampened agricultural labour productivity, which grew by 13 %, across the EU in 2022, new figures suggest.
The official EU statistics show the sharpest rate of increase in estimated agricultural labour productivity in 2022 was in Germany where it soared by 66.8%.
The average rise in the price of output products in Germany of 29.5% outstripped that of inputs at 14.0%.
But there were also strong increases in productivity in Estonia where it grew by 32.8%, Denmark by 29.8% and Luxembourg by 29.6.
Decline in productivity
The latest EU statistics show that there were substantially sharp declines in estimated agricultural labour productivity in Romania which fell by 21.2%, Slovakia which recorded a decline of 15.4%, Portugal which saw a 11.8% slump and in Malta where it dropped by 11.2%.
According to EU analysts the agricultural sector suffered a double blow from further Covid-19 related supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine in 2022.
They highlighted that energy supplies and the agricultural inputs, especially fertilisers and trade in some agricultural commodities had been “disrupted”.
Agricultural labour productivity in European regions had to absorb these shocks in their regional and European-wide markets and the latest statistics reflected their level of exposure to these shocks and also their resilience to factors outside their control.
But the support programmes created by the EU to compensate farmers for the high prices of input items, such as fertilisers and energy resulted in a 3% increase in subsidies last year.
Labour productivity impacted by price increases
The latest EU statistics also highlight that the increase in agricultural labour productivity was impacted by a sharp rise of 16.2% in gross value added (GVA) at current prices.
This was based on sharp increases in both the average price of output which jumped by 23% and intermediate consumption which also rose by 25.4% respectively.
A key factor last year was also the declines in the volumes of both agricultural output which registered a decline of 3.0% and intermediate consumption which dipped by 3.1%.