Macra has called on the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), to publish the criteria by which it defines a family farm in Ireland, to ensure that the relevant farmers can anticipate how certain policies will affect them.
The call comes as multiple farm organisations voice their concerns on how family farms would be affected by a 120-cow cap on equipment grants under the new Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS).
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) told Agriland that it believes a proposal to introduce a ceiling such as this is “being considered” by the department.
Agriland has submitted numerous requests to the DAFM for confirmation of this, however, no statement has been provided.
“Currently young farmers are struggling to gain access to finance to support development on farm, this coincides with a labour shortage across all farms,” said Macra president John Keane.
“This is the reality on farm and at the same time the department want to put more barriers in the way of young people entering the sector,” he added.
Yesterday, president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) Pat McCormack, stated that to introduce a policy such as this would serve “as more evidence of an official agenda against our flagship, family dairy farm sector”.
Keane said that if the department has criteria around what a family farm is and details on what farms would be affected by a cap on numbers, it should publish them.
“If these reports are to be believed the department now has a set of criteria defined and it is only fair that farmers are told what these are.
“According to the Teagasc Farm Structure Survey there are 137,500 family farms in Ireland.
“Earlier this year Macra sat in the Food Vision Dairy Group and the family farm model was discussed, however, no stakeholder including DAFM were in a position to define what the family farm is.
“Our family farm model is something we pride ourselves on when we are selling our produce on the global market.
“Any moves to undermine that could jeopardise our access to markets, it is hard to believe that as representatives of the next generation of farmers, that we were not consulted prior to a definition of a family farm and a set of criteria being applied,” the Macra president concluded.