The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has called for the suspension of the Food Vision Dairy Group as concerns around food security escalate.
The Food Vision Dairy Group, chaired by former director of Teagasc, Prof. Gerry Boyle, is tasked with examining ways for the dairy sector to help achieve targets for agriculture and land use in the Climate Action Plan 2021.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has asked the group to produce a detailed plan by Q2 2022.
Controversy erupted following the latest meeting of the committee this week when the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) raised the possibility of milk quotas.
It met with a furious response from farming organisations and led to Minister McConalogue issuing a statement outlining that no concrete proposals were already defined for the dairy sector by his department.
Food Vision Dairy Group
However, as the impacts of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine continue to be felt in global supply chains, the IFA believes the committee’s work should be paused.
IFA Dairy Committee chair Stephen Arthur told Agriland that the IFA is aware of climate change laws and targets but said that “we are living in unprecedented times”.
“Obviously, our first thoughts are with the people of Ukraine, but we have to recognise that food security is now a much bigger political priority.
“We need to focus our minds on what is important now and not in 2030,” he stated.
“On Sunday, we had the minister calling for a ‘wartime effort’ to produce more food. Then on Monday, we had his officials telling us they were considering quotas on production. It is not consistent.
“There is no point creating further stress around quotas when our farmers on the ground are struggling to get key inputs for their farms.”
The IFA dairy chair said that the European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski had raised the need to reconsider the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy due to the war in Ukraine.
“The responsible thing to do now is to suspend the Food Vision Dairy Group until we have some degree of certainty,” he said.
Arthur explained that farmers are currently in “survival mode”, given the enormous cost of inputs such as feed, fertiliser and energy.
The IFA dairy chair also said there are major concerns about supplies of fuel among the farming sector.
“The department and all actors in the sector need to focus on assisting farmers during the current crisis,” Arthur concluded.