Farmers under seige from nitrates directive
This directive is a crisis in the making and reassurances from the Department have done nothing to erase the concerns of ICMSA.
Its president Pat O’Rourke says the “wolf is snapping at our heels and if the directive goes ahead as proposed the dairy sector will be under siege”. Mr O’Rourke has a huge concern that the derogation the Government believes it can win, even if it does win it, will still place the 10,000 farmers above the stocking limit under enormous pressure to prove stocking rates above the directive are not environmentally damaging.
It took Dutch farmers some two years to make their case in Brussels, however the EU juggernaut is revving up at this stage.
This directive was enacted in 1991 and to date Ireland has managed to escape its clutches. On the face of it both the farm lobby and the department have been complacent about this and unless the Department of Agriculture delivers on the derogation pretty smartly the implications for Irish agriculture are very serious.
Failure to comply could lead to fines of €40,000 on Ireland per day by the EU and it could also jeopardise the end of Single Farm Payments if we are judged to have failed to deliver.
A real problem for dairy farmers is the pressure to improve output in order to stay in business, this is a major issue, especially for farmers on small acreage.
With pressure on the dairy sector to produce up to 90,000 gallons a year to survive, the relevance of the directive to their future becomes increasingly obvious.
This island produces more grass than any other State in the EU.
Any restriction on its ability to exploit the grass by producing more milk is tantamount to putting an artificial cap on farmers' potential earnings indefinitely.
While environmental issues are critical, and Irish agriculture has a lot to answer for in that area, it seems the ICMSA’s concerns are understandable even if they seem exaggerated from a Government perspective.
Pat O’Rourke rejects any such suggestion.
“The wolf is snapping at our heels and at this stage we have no assurances that the 10,000 dairy farmers under threat form this Directive will be alright at the end of the day”.
In the fight for a derogation Mr O’Rourke is deeply concerned that the soil sampling and science-based arguments, required to demonstrate Irish farmers are not damaging the environment with stocking levels above 0.8 livestock per acre, will be difficult to prove.
It is the case that new farming techniques and better technology has significantly reduced environmental damage.
That's accepted, but proving it to an increasingly diligent environmental body in Brussels will be extremely difficult and by the time it is done it could be too late for thousands of dairy farmers.
Mr O’Rourke says he will debate the issues with the Minister anytime.
In its defence the Department has said it is preparing its submission for the EU and will prove its case for 1.2 livestock per acre which would take the pressure off farmers.
But that does not seem to be the concern of Mr O’Rourke and his members.
Mr O’Rourke says that neither Teagasc, nor anybody else associated with Irish farming, has provided the scientific proof required at EU level to ensure a derogation is delivered speedily to Irish farmers.
His fear is that this proof will have to be produced individually in each case and that the process will prove the undoing of many, in dairy farming in particular.
Given the 11th hour nature of the response to this issue those with a strong concern for the environment one could be forgiven for taking the view that it was about time that the environment got equal billing with farm issues in this country.
This issue won’t go away however.
