‘Someone with 100 acres should be able to survive and make a living from farming’
Christy Comerford is one of the farmers behind a new campaign for a ‘carbon neutral’ beef scheme to deliver a fair price and living wage for suckler farmers
There is more political focus on than ever before on agricultural sustainability, at both national and European levels. However, plenty of farmers are adamant that they are already producing a top-quality product, using environmentally friendly and sustainable practices. And they also argue that they need to be officially recognised and paid for this.
Christy Comerford is part of a national group of suckler farmers formed to campaign for the introduction of a carbon-neutral suckler cow scheme which they maintain would rejuvenate the suckler industry in Ireland.
Christy, who is vice-president of the Charolais Cattle Society and farms in Co Kilkenny, says: “We have a scheme lodged with the government, which will see sucklers cows farmed at a carbon-neutral level with greater emphasis on using fewer antibiotics and fertilisers.
Markets
“If we could introduce a scheme where all calves are vaccinated against IBR…there was an animal welfare scheme with this in the past, but that’s not there anymore and as a result, the animals got sick travelling abroad and we lost markets.
“If this could be reintroduced as part of our scheme, it would help regain those markets as well as improve human health because there would be fewer antibiotics in the meat.
“We’re hoping other groups and farm bodies will show their support for the scheme.
“The scheme would see all calves tagged with a green tag to signify that they qualify for the scheme.
“Although the scheme is calling for farmers to be carbon neutral, we believe a lot of what we’re doing is carbon neutral anyway.
“We want the Department to come and support what we’re trying to do. We want to get supermarkets, restaurants and fast-food outlets to take it on board so we can get paid (a premium) for our products.”
Part of the proposal for the next government states that there should be more funding for Bord Bia, to market Irish beef.
While Christy agrees Irish beef needs to be marketed properly, he believes the farmer’s bottom line has to be the priority for any marketing body.
“There is no point in big organisations getting funding if there isn’t any money left for the farmer because the numbers are going to dwindle and there’ll be no suckler cows left in the country,” he says.
“When the milk quota went, they (the government) wanted everyone to put their eggs in one basket and go milking.
“But the suckler cow is needed if Ireland wants to keep its name for good-quality beef. If customers from abroad come looking for quality beef and we can’t give it, they’ll go looking somewhere else.”
Christy can draw on over 30 years’ farming experience to back up his arguments for a new approach.
“I was born into the farm,” he says. “I was the youngest of six. My father died when I was a year old. The land was set for a while until we got going, but we gradually took it back. I bought my first calf when I was six, a Charolais, and built the herd from that. I got into suckling and began to buy pedigree cattle.
“I liked the Charolais breed. They had a good weight to them; you could say that they weighed and paid. I bought a pedigree Charolais bull in the early 1990s. I bred commercial cattle and won a lot of prizes for big groups of calves.”
Christy was picked to host the Charolais World Technical Congress in 2019, and he has won male and female champion awards at the National Show in Tullamore.
Neither Christy nor his wife