The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has said he is “very open” to the proposal for a €40/calf rearing payment for farmers who rear calves from the dairy herd destined for beef production.

Farmers who reared calves in 2023 were eligible for a €20/calf payment up to a maximum of 50 calves for meeting the criteria of the National Dairy Beef Welfare Scheme (NDBWS).

This year, that payment was not available to farmers who reared calves and was instead available to dairy farmers producing calves.

At the official launch of new sustainability charter published by Meat Industry Ireland (MII) on Wednesday, October 9, Agriland asked Minister McConalogue if farmers could see support payments returned to those who are actually rearing the calves.

Responding to the question, Minister McConalogue said: “I’m very open to that. The budget is about securing the funding and that’s the key focus at budget time. I was glad to be able to get the money to double the [NDBWS] payment from €20 to €40/[eligible calf].

The minister explained to Agriland that he doesn’t have “any predetermined view” in relation to how the rollout of the funding “would be decided” and explained that he will “engage with farm representatives” in relation to how the funding is rolled out to farmers.

“I will engage with farm representatives in relation to how we do that – whether all €40 for example is given to the calf rearer or whether there’s a mix.”

He said: “What I want to do is use that €40 in a way that grows our dairy-beef sector and supports our dairy-beef sector as much as possible and sees farmers make as strong a profit as possible too in terms of how we direct it.

“We want good-quality calves that are profitable for farmers to rear and we also want to support farmers who are rearing them as well in terms of the cost of that.”

Who should get the money?

This year, dairy farmers producing higher genetic beef merit calves will be allocated the funding.

While this incentive has good intentions and aims to improve the genetic beef merit of calves produced from the dairy herd, it will do little to encourage farmers to continue rearing calves into the future.

Dairy farmers producing good calves generally have no issue securing a customer and a fair price for their calves every spring. It is now clear amongst dairy farmers that there is no demand from beef farmers for low-quality calves or calves with poor genetic beef merit.

This means that by default, dairy farmers need to produce good-quality calves if they want to secure a market for them, but there is currently no government support payment to encourage farmers (beef or dairy) to physically rear these calves.

It will be interesting to see how the additional funding secured under the NDBWS in Budget 2025 will be rolled out to farmers.