Top farmer looks to future as EU market support shrinks 50% in five years
YOU never had it so good, even if farming is not great, young farmers were told recently by Tom Clinton.
The Co Meath farmer, a former IFA President, envisaged more farms with two and even three incomes coming in.
"There is full employment in every region, you are well educated, we have a plentiful supply of reasonably priced foreign labour, and money is very cheap.
"There are many very well paid jobs in the state sector; the building industry is very good for now.
"The service industries are the future", he said, not the dairy industry in which he has invested heavily not just in Co Meath, but also in New Zealand and the US.
For his largely farming audience at the Macra na Feirme annual conference, one bit of basic advice was, "The difference between a good farmer and a bad farmer is two weeks."
Of even more significance, perhaps, is the few years it takes to go from today's heavily subsidised farming to the future Clinton spelled out of no guaranteed prices, no export refunds, more foreign market access to the European market, limits still on what Irish farmers can produce, and almost no loyalty to national or even EU products.
"There will be a single farm payment for the foreseeable future", Clinton predicted, but fewer full-time farmers.
He explained that the EU is spending 50% less on market support than it did five years ago, and going to spend less in future, in tandem with liberalisation of international trade over the next 20 years during which, Clinton predicted, there will still be EU preference for some products.
Where does that leave Clinton's area of specialisation, milk production?
"Young people will not go into this industry unless they are well paid", he warned.
The solution, he says, is to encourage creation of larger, efficient dairy farms, by freeing quota, changing tax laws and subsidising those who exit.
"We rationalise the industry and we prepare for the day that quotas will go", he summed up.
"This will be within three to five years."
To achieve his recommended 150,000 to 200,000 gallons per labour unit, he recommended the route followed by a well-known west Cork farmer, William Kingston.
William leased neighbouring farms on long leases, and is wintering his cows cheaply and is now producing 350,000 gallons.
He will be able to compete on a grass based system that has scale and efficiently.
If he is able to retain those leases, and with the short west Cork winter, it is impossible for anyone in the world to put him out of business, this is the future of Irish dairying, said Tom Clinton.
He was not so optimistic about the beef sector. primarily because the import price for beef at the end of the current WTO round would be about 2.07/kg (74p/lb), while the cost of production in Ireland is close to 2.70/kg.
"If Peter Mandelson gets his way and allows access on the scale proposed, then the beef industry in Europe is in trouble", warned Clinton.
"It may be possible to do large-scale suckling on marginal land and finish in feed lots or on grass with meal. Scale and availability of cheap land are of vital importance", he concluded.
Lamb has a future, he predicted, if we can convince processors and supermarkets to give farmers a reasonable amount of the end product price.
"Again, it will be on scale, with good stockmanship and efficient.
"Production of hill store lambs with fattening on the lowlands will be profitable. The size of these operations will be at least 1,500."
But with even grain farmers on the great plains of the US and Canada struggling, Ireland will have very few full-time grain growers, according to Tom Clinton.
"It will not be long until the EU is not self-sufficient in grain, at today's prices, even England will scarcely produce enough grain for their own needs next year", he told the Macra conference.
Ireland's few large, very efficient pig producers, will survive if they have good processors who market the product well, he predicted.
