Tillage farmers throughout the country have been waiting for two things for too long.
One, a break in the weather and two, for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, to provide an update on the promised ‘detailed’ plan for the tillage sector.
Back in May, Minister McConalogue established The Food Vision Tillage Group to undertake a root and branch review of the challenge facing the crops sector.
Since then tillage farmers have endured some of the worst conditions imaginable – many are in despair.
So what progress has been made by the Food Vision Tillage Group? What has it achieved, what does it hope to achieve, what seeds has it sown?
Minister McConalogue “tasked the group with providing a detailed plan and recommendations by the end of July with a final plan to be submitted during the final quarter of 2023”, according to his department.
We are in August and what’s required now is for Minister McConalogue to step forward and commit to a full, frank, and honest discourse on what has been said within the confines of the vision group meetings held up to this point.
We know all about the minister’s ambition to grow the tillage area because we have all heard it directly from the mouth of Minister McConalogue.
Food Vision Tillage Group
But what we have not heard is anything directly from him on the Food Vision Tillage Group. Maybe he is waiting for the chair of the group, Matt Dempsey, to speak up, either way I know many, many tillage farmers who are waiting eagerly to hear directly from the group.
Two months ago, Minister McConalogue rocked up to a Fianna Fáil-hosted farmers’ meeting in Bellewstown.
On the evening in question, he made it quite clear that the current government was up for a root and branch review of the tillage industry – one that would deliver growth and future sustainability for the sector.
This commitment so far has failed to impress me.
Because if he really wants to future-proof the tillage industry then this requires a buy-in from every tillage farmer, from the current generation and the next.
They need to feel part of the process, they need to know that their interests, their concerns are what is really being discussed around the Food Vision Tillage Group table.
Everyone who has a stake in the future of tillage in this country needs to know what group has actually put forward as recommendations- what it’s thinking is on key issues.
Lurking in the background within all of this is the role that has been played by the farming organisations in developing the conversations held by the Food Vision Tillage Group’s membership up to this point.
Some weeks ago, the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) indicated that that it was working on a holistic response to new nitrates’ regulations, one that would take account of all the farming sectors’ needs.
Moreover, the specific needs of tillage sector would be front and centre within these deliberations.
A fundamental driver here, according to the IFA, is the need for tillage farmers to be placed on an equal footing relative to their dairying colleagues, when it comes to the future leasing of land.
To date, that I am aware of, the outcome of these discussions has not been made public.
But I come back to the fundamental point.
The Food Vision Tillage Group was established to help plot a future course for the crops sector in Ireland.
Surely, it is imperative that a full and public debate on these matters is kick-started with immediate effect.