The Green Party’s agriculture spokesperson has said that “pitching small family farms against global giants in beef is totally unfair”.
Speaking at the Green Party’s General Election campaign launch in Dublin yesterday, Wednesday, January 15, Pippa Hackett expressed her concern about the current state of the beef industry.
She explained: “I think the policies we’ve been following have led us to this, they’ve led us back to protests, back to a situation where beef farmers are getting paid pittance for their produce.
We produce a wonderful product here, but we produce it in such quantities that it’s aimed at a commodity market and that’s not where the value should lie for Irish farmers.
“We have a small family farming unit, we’re unique in that sense in Ireland, and yet we’re pitching our small family farms against these global giants in beef.
“It’s totally unfair, we should be honing in on the quality and the value that we could be adding to our beef and commanding a price rather than being a price taker.”
A whole system change
The Co. Offaly woman – from a beef farming background – outlined that “a whole system change” is required for the beef industry.
She said: “I believe we can produce even better beef that gets to the most discerning customers who will pay an absolute premium for it.”
Continuing, the Green Party agricultural spokesperson said: “We have a very high input model.
Farmers’ money is all spent before they sell anything so we need to look at how we can reduce input costs.
Concluding, she explained: “I think then we will see a shift in the type of produce we produce and we will see an increase in farm income.”