Pause what you think you may know about succession – or at the very least disregard what a certain family on television is telling you all about it – particularly when it comes to land in Ireland.
Research suggests that 77% of farmers over the age of 55 in Ireland have no definite succession plan.
That, according to outgoing president of Macra, John Keane, is a major issue that can no longer be ignored.
Last year the organisation received a record number of inquiries to a dedicated service it provides that matches farmers with other farmers looking for land and new opportunities.
The majority of the inquiries to its Land Mobility Service – 40% – came from landowners looking to step back.
But 35% of all inquiries to the service also came from young farmers or potential new farming entrants who were looking for new opportunities.
According to Keane that exactly illustrates the challenge facing farming at this time – there are people who want to exit but have no successors to hand over to and there is a new generation who are just desperate to get started.
Land Mobility Service
The Land Mobility Service aims to provide a “dedicated proactive support service for farmers and farm families” who want to expand, change enterprise or step back.
Although the not-for-profit, confidential service is available to support all farmers, the majority of people who have most engaged with it to date are farmers with “no identified farming successor”.
According to Keane, this speaks volumes.
“One in 16 of our farmers are over the age of 35, if we put this in the context of a GAA football team then our full GAA football team would be over the age of 35, only our first substitute would be under 35,” he said.
“That is the picture we have in Irish farming at the moment.
“The reason why the Land Mobility Service is important is because it facilitates the transfer of land from older generations who are looking to step back and it facilitates generational renewal.”
According to its 2023 report, the service received 1,080 calls in 2022 and since it was first established in 2015 it has helped to facilitate an estimated 1,000 “arrangements” representing more than 75,000ac and almost 2,000 farm entities.
Around 100 arrangements were facilitated in 2022 alone, reflecting the demand for the match-making service across the country.
However Keane claims it could do so much more and that it is being significantly held back by a lack of funding. It currently has a staff of just three people.
The Land Mobility Service receives €100,000 per annum in funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Keane has repeatedly asked for more financial support and suggested that it could come from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) but so far, despite a 16-month campaign, his appeals have fallen on deaf ears.
“Funding is the single biggest restriction, we received additional funding in 2022, we need boots on the grounds to facilitate the arrangements,” he said.
“To provide staffing on the ground, to provide resources we need resources, to get a national footprint – we need more funding.”
To realise their ambitions for the service Macra has estimated that funding would need to increase to in the region of €1 million a year.
Keane said Macra’s Land Mobility Service has been referenced in Europe as an “exemplary service” and as a role model for other countries to follow.
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine himself has also described the service as “one of the great success stories of Irish agriculture”.
Minister McConalogue said: “It has played a huge role in facilitating the movement of land from those who have to those who need it through innovative systems.
“It has also given farmers the opportunity to step back, step aside or change their system and drive new impetus into their farm.”
In particular, he has praised how the service provided older and young farmers with a chance to go in new directions and said no other organisation could have done what Macra had done with the Land Mobility Service.
Succession
But although welcome, the minister’s praise will not alone, according to Austin Finn, programme manager and facilitator of the Land Mobility Service, help Macra achieve its ambitions through the service, “to keep farms alive in the country”.
According to Finn, what the service provides is very tailored and very specialised.
“No farmer wants to hear the word ‘retirement’, they’re not going to like that but what they do want to hear about are options and young farmers always want to hear about opportunities and what we do is match each of them up, we help put arrangements in place and it is all to do with what works for the farmer,” he said.
“It is a great satisfaction to put the right people together – to keep farms alive.
“The main cohort of farmers that we deal with are landowners who have no farming successor, they have lovely farms with good infrastructure but there may be nobody in the family who is going to be the farmer so there needs to be someone from outside – and it is finding someone suitable for that landowner so that the farm can continue which is so important,” Finn added.