‘A year of change, a year of moving the goalposts’

Cavan IFA Co Executive Chairman, Maurice Brady described 2023 as a year of change and one of “moving the goalpost” in the farming industry. He was speaking after his being proposed and seconded, uncontested to serve a second term as chairman during the AGM on Monday night of last week.

Mr Brady addressed a number of issues on the night and told a packed Lavey Inn that the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has resulted in “many difficulties” for farmers including delayed payments, reduced payments and, in some cases, no payments at all.

CAP is key to securing the future of agriculture and forestry, as well as achieving the objectives of the European Green Deal. “Believe it or not, there are talks already beginning on a replacement for CAP in 2028,” continued Mr Brady.

“One thing is clear to me: CAP money cannot be spread any more thinly. It needs especially to support vulnerable sectors in many areas. Any further environmental asks that are on the table would need to be funded separately - CAP just won’t foot everything.”

Meanwhile, with regard to TAMS, Mr Brady described it as a “complete disaster” and pointed to how incomprehensible it was that “nobody has drawn down any TAMS funding so far”. The scheme provides grants to farmers to build or improve a specified range of farm buildings and equipment on their holding. “It’s unbelievable that the whole TAMS process is bogged down and it needs a complete overhaul now.”

Input costs reduced slightly on farms in 2022 and Mr Brady indicated that those costs would need to continue decreasing if farming is to stay viable. “Costs have remained critically high on farms, although reducing from the highs of 2022, the cost of the basic inputs - fertiliser, meal and diesel - have stayed stubbornly high and we would need to see a reduction in those input costs coming very soon,” he added.

“On the ACRES, due to great pressure from the IFA, 46,000 farmers were accepted into Tranche 1 last year. Nine thousand farmers have applied for Tranche 2 but the Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue says there are only 4,000 places available. I think it would be a very poor show if these farmers who are putting their hands up to do extra environmental work were excluded.

"Also, all the ACRES payments should be paid immediately; it’s just not good enough that the 18,000 people in the co-operation areas haven’t got a payment yet.”

The Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) suckler scheme was introduced last year and replaces the BDGP scheme, which was in place since 2015.

All suckler farmers, whether they were in the BDGP or not, are now eligible to apply for this new scheme and its objective is to provide support to beef farmers to improve the environmental sustainability of the national beef herd.

“Everything was looking positive when the scheme was introduced as it was based on the old BDGP then, about two months ago, IBF came up with a whole new set of evaluations and put the fox into the henhouse,” the IFA chair added.

“Although the Minister has said the new ratings won’t affect the SCEP participants, it’s another example of how the moving goalposts make it almost impossible for farmers to plan ahead.”

Mr Brady also had some strong words to share on the Calf Welfare Scheme and on the subject of TB. “In the Calf Welfare Scheme IBR testing was thrown into the mix while the pneumonia vaccine was a great success in previous years,” he continued before adding “this year we will be insisting that we revert back to that vaccine subsidy for the scheme. To my mind, it’s a nobrainer.”

He went on to point out how “unfortunate” it was that, for the last 12 or 14 months, TB figures have headed in the wrong direction across Cavan and Monaghan. “After making some steady progress, reactor numbers are increasing. A lot more work needs to be done on wildlife reduction.

"At a number of branch AGMs over the winter, farmers were reporting they had a number of deer in the area - some in areas where deer were never present before and this is a very worrying development. We met the District Veterinary Office (DVO) recently and made these points to them. We will be keeping a close eye on the TB situation going forward.”