“Before any plans are hatched to substantially increase crop production, we need to make sure that adequate supplies of grass and silage are maintained. This is not straightforward due to the catastrophic increase in fertiliser and fuel costs,” said Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) president, Dermot Kelleher.
He made his comments in response to reports that the agriculture minister is expected to outline a government proposal to ask Irish farmers to grow more crops to offset food supply issues caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Minister McConalogue is meeting with farm organisations tomorrow (Tuesday, March 8).
Speaking in advance of that meeting, the ICSA president said “there is no point trying to reinvent the wheel if the basics are not right, in relation to department plans to ramp up crop production in response to the Ukraine-Russia war”.
He said many cattle and sheep farmers are going to struggle to make the normal quantities of silage unless something is done about escalating costs.
“That is why ICSA is proposing a fertiliser voucher of €2,000, as a subsidy to buy up to €4,000 worth of fertiliser. This is targeted at lower income cattle and sheep farms who are not getting help from either dairy co-ops or banks.”
But more will have to be done, he said.
“It makes no sense to talk about growing more crops with the escalating cost of fuel.”
He said the ICSA believes that a rebate on green diesel to significantly reduce its cost will be essential, even for normal grassland operations such as silage.
“Eliminating VAT on green diesel is not a panacea because it is charged at the lower 13% rate and because most agri-contractors, and some farmers can reclaim it anyway.”
While, he said, the ICSA agrees that more grain needs to be grown in Ireland, it is incumbent on the government to come forward with substantial proposals on fuel and fertiliser first.
“Even then, there are substantial problems including the lack of grain storage, the availability of extra tillage contracting capacity and basic tillage skills are non-existent on a lot of grass farms.”
This crisis is a real wake-up call for the EU and national decision makers, he said.
“For years, we have talked about two critical issues – the need for food security and the need to enable EU farmers to ramp up renewable energy production.
Unfortunately, both of these have been side-lined by the out of touch EU Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies. In particular, we have to re-examine the CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] focus on lowering production which will turn out disastrous given what is going on in Ukraine.”