The suckler carbon efficiency programme (SCEP) is “failing totally to improve the herds of smaller farmers,” the Fianna Fáil TD for Galway West has claimed.
Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív told the Dáil today (Thursday, July 13) that the actual effect of SCEP is “that a huge number of small farmers do not participate in it”.
He asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, why all farmers in the SCEP scheme “also have to be in the Bord Bia scheme”.
Minister McConalogue said: “This decision was made in the strategic interest of improving our suckler and beef herd and especially the value of the animals we sell and market abroad.
“Origin Green, the Bord Bia quality assurance programme, was initiated in 2011. It was way ahead of its time and came long before the sustainability discussion became so mainstream.”
He also outlined to Deputy Ó Cuív that “signficant additional national funds” were directed to the scheme which “means the payments under the new suckler cow scheme will be €150 per cow for the first 22 cows, compared with €90 for the first ten in the previous scheme”.
Putting farmers off
However the Fianna Fáil TD for Galway West said a “surfeit of bureaucracy” was putting farmers joining the scheme and that “Bord Bia bureaucracy” was causing the problem.
Minister McConalogue acknowledged that “it has been a challenge to get more participation in quality assurance”.
In response Deputy Ó Cuív told the Dáil: “If a huge number of farmers are not participating because they are put off by the conditions of the scheme and the bureaucracy involved, and especially those farmers with small herds on poorer land who sell the cattle younger and who are not participating because of the Bord Bia condition, are we not losing and throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”
According to the Minister for Agriculture there are “3,513 participants in SCEP who have reference animals of ten or fewer. This equates to 16.9% of the total applicants who applied for SCEP”.
Suckler cows
The Fianna Fáil TD for Galway West said this means that a total of 56% of farmers, which is more than half, have fewer than seven suckler cows.
“This is 44,292 farmers. As the minister has said, 3,513 farmers applied for the scheme. This is 8%.
“The scheme is failing totally to improve the herds of the smaller farmers. Less than 10% of that cohort of farmers have applied. They are not doing anything because a deluxe requirement is required even though very few of those would be finishers,” he stated.
Minister McConalogue said it has always been “a challenge” to get smaller herds into the suckler schemes and he ruled out Deputy Ó Cuív’s suggestion that a modified scheme could be introduced.
“I do not believe it is possible to have a halfway house for quality assurance.
“We have one national quality assurance scheme and one national brand. It is important this is as strong as possible,” he stated.