Sheep farmers “cannot survive on prices that have been consistently worse than last year,” the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) has said.
“Sheep farmers were hammered in 2022 when lamb prices tumbled while our costs were rising sharply, and the situation is even worse again now,” the association’s sheep chairperson, Sean McNamara, said.
McNamara added that prices for sheep farmers are down on this time last year, and remain “a very long way from where they need to be”.
He said that sheep throughput has remained at similar levels to last year, and that this is at odds with the fall in prices.
“In the last month alone prices have come back more than €1/kg, the equivalent of around €22/head. Factories are telling us the markets are not there, yet there has not been any reduction in the levels of live imports or imports of lamb in carcass form,” McNamara commented.
The ICSA sheep chair added: “Sheep farmers are under severe financial pressure with no let-up in input costs and no real justification for why prices are being slashed. This has been going on for far too long and many sheep farmers are in despair at this point.”
The ICSA put forward the case for a sheep payment worth €35/ewe in talks with Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue this week.
However, according to McNamara, this is the “very least that needs to be done”.
“Yes, we need a sheep payment that can deliver €35/ewe on an annual basis, but we also need an emergency package to support a short-term payment of €20/ewe in 2023,” he said.
“The ICSA argues that the Brexit Adjustment Reserve [BAR] should be used, and we do not accept that the case cannot be made to access this fund to support sheep farmers, given that it has been used for genotyping the dairy herd and for the organic sector,” McNamara added.