How sustainable is our future when farmers

THIS year has been a real test for the resilience of farmers. Regardless of enterprise, or stocking rate, the prolonged drought in June and July brought challenges that very few farmers were equipped for. Obviously, the long winter and bad weather in the spring, with snow in March, had already used up all reserves of fodder. While the focus for much of 2018 has been on feeding livestock, we must not forget that it has also been a challenging year for tillage farmers.

Harvest 2017 was exceedingly difficult, but 2018 saw many crops do poorly due to the drought. Scarcity of straw and feed has resulted in some upside for tillage farmers, but declining areas under cereals are the real indicator of how that sector is doing. The month of September has brought some respite with phenomenal grass growth in most but not all areas.

The recent Inter Agency Fodder Group meeting heard that the Teagasc Fodder Census suggested that the national fodder deficit had reduced to 11pc but fodder deficits in the south east were still running at twice that level.

In some parts of the country, the last week has seen too much rain for comfort for those trying to make silage.

There has been some debate about whether dairy expansion has exacerbated the crisis. While it is true that we now have some 1.4 million dairy cows, a 40pc increase in a number of years, the overall national herd size has not grown to anything like the same extent.

What is clear is that questions will have to be asked of farming models that depend on short winters and high stocking rates. This is not to say that we should throw the baby out with the bath water, but making surplus silage should be the norm on all farms to cater for contingency.

Models of dairy farming which are obsessed with proving how cheap we can produce milk are doing neither farmer nor consumer any favours. The message needs to go back to processors and retailers that price paid to farmers needs to be sufficient to allow for making sufficient silage or alternative feeds to cater for extreme weather events.

Perhaps the more important question is not about fodder on its own, but the extent to which farmers are expected to run faster just to stand still.

This has really come into sharp focus in the post-quota era. While many farmers have benefited from the removal of the quota straitjacket, some have expanded too fast, and with too much risk.

ICSA president Patrick Kent has been outspoken in questioning whether the New Zealand model should be replicated here.

His point is that we need to worry about the impact of large dairy herds on the mental and physical well-be- ing of farmers. He argues that New Zealand dairy farmers get burnt out and very few spend a full career milking cows.

This calls into question the future for our farmers modelled on an average herd size of 400 cows, totally dependent on a merry-go-round of imported labour that is getting harder and harder to source, a model that is totally dependent on nitrates derogation, imported fodder, no health or stress setbacks for the farmers and their families, large borrowings, and totally dependent on costings that treat the farmer’s own labour and own land as valueless.

We are driving our farmers to work harder and harder for less and less so that retailers