Some €14.2 billion worth of agri-food exports were sent out of Ireland last year, according to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) Annual Report 2020.
The department’s report was launched today (Thursday, August 12) by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue.
According to the report, the agriculture and food sector “continued to play a vital role in Ireland’s economy” with agri-food exports accounting for 8.8% of total merchandising exports.
This came to a value of €14.2 billion – marking growth of 60% since 2010.
It was noted that the UK remained Ireland’s largest agri-food export destination, despite a drop from €5.5 billion in 2019 to €5.3 billion in 2020 – translating into a dip of 38% to 37% of total agri-food exports.
Exports to the EU were down slightly at €4.6 billion or 32% of the total, while exports to the “rest of the world” were up marginally at €4.3 billion or 31% of the total in 2020.
The top three export categories in 2020 were dairy produce at €5.1 billion, beef at €2.3 billion and beverages at €1.5 billion, accounting for €8.9 billion or 63% of total worldwide agri-food exports.
The report highlighted that the Irish agri-food sector makes a significant contribution to employment, accounting for 7.1% of total employment – or 163,600 jobs – in rural and coastal areas.
Dairy exports
According to the DAFM report, Ireland exported dairy products to approximately 143 countries.
Quoting Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures for 2020, it is noted that these “indicate a -0.7% volume decline and a 0.4% value increase compared to the same period in 2019”.
Sales of butter were close to the €1 billion mark once again in 2020, while cheddar exports grew by 5.8% with a value of €750 million.
Exports of skim milk powder (SMP) by value increased by 5.9%.
Beef trade
Beef worth over €2.3 billion and just short of 525,000t was exported in 2020; this, the report notes, represented a decrease in both value and volume of 0.7% on the previous year.
In value terms approximately 44% of beef exports went to countries within the EU, a further 45.6% to the UK and the remaining 10.4% to other third country markets.
In terms of volume 38.2% of beef products were exported to countries within the EU and 16% exported to third country markets (other than the UK), with the balance going to the UK.
Live exports in 2020 reached over 263,000 head of cattle, a decrease of 11.6% on 2019 figures. Slaughter reached over 1.8 million head in 2020 which was a 2.6%
increase on 2019 figures.
The average price for R3 Steers in 2020 was 362.73c/kg (excluding VAT), which represented a 1% increase on the previous year, the report says.
A high price of 375.30c/kg (excluding VAT) recorded during August.
Sheep exports
Meanwhile, sheepmeat export values increased by 11.9% on the previous year, to reach almost €356 million, while volumes rose by 3.4% to over 64,000t.
Slaughtering increased by 3% in 2020 to just under 2.9 million head. The national average price in 2020 was €519.92/100kg – a 13% increase on the previous year.
In value terms, over 73% of sheepmeat products were exported to countries within the EU and 17% went to the UK, while the remainder were exported to third country markets.
A total 44,360t of sheepmeat products were exported to EU countries, with France receiving the highest amount of 20,300t. The UK received almost 13,000t.
Cereal production
Overall cereal production in 2020 decreased to approximately 1.9 million tonnes from 2.2 million tonnes produced in 2019, the report notes.
Cereal area increased slightly by approximately 3,000ha to 264,628ha. This is the second year in a row that has shown a slight increase in area and shows stabilisation in the cereal area following years of continual decline between 2012 and 2019, the department says.
Grain prices showed improvement with feed barley trading at approximately €160/t in comparison to €144/t in 2019 and feed wheat trading at €181/t in comparison in €153/t in 2019.
On the beverages side of things, it was noted that the US remains the key market for alcohol exports with Irish whiskey (€370.3 million) and Irish cream (€139.8 million) exports accounting for 35.1% (€510 million) of beverage exports.
The distilling industry has grown from three distilleries in 2014, to 38 at the end of 2020.
Volume growth in the sector is largely driven by continued double-digit demand for Irish Whiskey in many markets.