Fears incomes will decline under decoupling
While Mr O’Rourke said he accepted that decoupling would allow people more freedom, he said farmers must be able to make a living from it.
“There is no point in having the freedom to farm if you can’t make a decent living from it,” he said at the ICMSA annual general meeting, in Limerick.
Mr O’Rourke said dairy farmers were facing a possible 28c/gal (22p) cut in milk prices, with only 55% compensation.
The result is a possible income reduction of 30%. This would lead to a dramatic reduction in farmer numbers, unless action was taken. Mr O’Rourke called for policies to retain the existing number of dairy farmers, on whom 9,000 processing jobs were dependent. The sector was facing a future of fewer dairy farmers and fewer employees, he said.
Mr O’Rourke said that, as of 2005, because compensation would no longer be linked to active producers, dairy farmers who expand their milk quota would receive no compensation for it.
The dairy sector must devise a strategy to prevent the 30% income reduction. Action, not talk, was needed, he said. Expanding milk quotas are not the answer. That is the strategy in the US and New Zealand and it does not work.
Mr O’Rourke said Ireland had a choice - support the family farm structure, or follow the New Zealand model, which would destroy parts of rural Ireland.
“Many policymakers don’t seem to care. I believe that we must support the family farm model, but this will involve a major change in policy at co-operative, national and EU level,” he said.
Mr O’Rourke asked why the FAPRI-Teagasc study said ‘full decoupling’ was better for farmers, when 65% of them would be better off if the slaughter premium was retained. The regional impact of ‘full decoupling’ had not been addressed, he said.
Other EU member states were considering protecting farming in vulnerable areas, he said. Ireland had chosen to ignore this, Mr O’Rourke said, and that dairy and suckler farmers were concerned about their return from calves and weanlings.
