It’s the road for small farms
Yes, farmers’ markets are being put forward as a pathway to conserve smaller scale family farming and help prevent rural depopulation in Ireland. And remarkably, this local food movement is growing, despite almost no support from policymakers.
With eyes fixed on world markets for our beef and dairy products, and with record beef exports to the EU to celebrate, local farmers’ markets are far from the minds of many.
But at Teagasc’s Rural Development Conference 2004, researchers Caroline Crowley and David Meredith put forward strong arguments supporting back-to-basics measures to save our small farmers.
Farms under 20 ha (50 acres) are decreasing in number by 3.3% per annum, while the number of our larger farms stabilises.
Farming has become more competitive, has been forced to do so by the “agri-food industrial complex” which rules on the markets where Irish farm produce must ultimately find a buyer.
Only large farms can survive hotter competition, in the long run.
Smaller farms are hanging on, some of them “below the economic threshold deemed to be economically viable, at which farmers and farm families make the decision to leave the land” according to researchers.
They are kept in place by measures such as REPS which, the researchers say, is delivered within the context of an ever-changing political environment and is thus vulnerable to withdrawal.
They also raise the threat posed by inflation eating into payments from REPS and other such schemes.
But it’s the orientation of agricultural production towards the global food economy that they see posing the main threat to Ireland’s smaller family farms, which are simply unable to compete at the same level as large-scale, intensive and industrial-style farming.
The writing must on the wall for smaller farms, when cash costs of beef production in Ireland are more than three and a half times Argentinean levels, and Irish sheepmeat production costs are more than three times those of New Zealand.
Direct EU payments have kept the wolf from the door but, next January, decoupled payments will become exposed to budgetary pressures due to EU enlargement.
Still, money will have to be found as long as maintaining smaller and well-managed family farms remains an objective in the European Model of Agriculture.
And Teagasc researchers came up with four alternative and viable self-help business strategies available to the smaller Irish family farm.
One of these is well established in Ireland - combining part-time farming with off-farm jobs. By 2002, farm holders and/or their spouses on an estimated 48% of farms had an off-farm job and almost 60% of farm household income came from off-farm sources. But this strategy depends on the geographical availability of appropriate off-farm jobs.
A second alternative is agricultural production combined with a non-farming enterprise on the farm, such as farmhouse accommodation. However, this strategy can demand capital investment beyond the means of farmers.
A third alternative is market-based and ecologically sound production as in chemical-free or organic agriculture. In Ireland, the market for organic food is e25 million per year and growing at 25% per annum. But only 30% of that demand is satisfied with Irish grown produce. Between 1998 and 2000, only 12% more Irish land was devoted to organic farming, compared to a 67% increase in the EU generally - an impressive increase, in the context of overall decline in EU agriculture.
Unfortunately, the same stumbling blocks of economies of scale and cost-price squeeze that threaten all small farmers will also arise in the organic system.
Which brings the researchers back to farmers’ markets. They are growing in popularity because they strengthen consumer-farmer linkages, through small-scale, diverse and ecologically-sound farming, while showcasing local fresh food, and earning the support of a growing grassroots movement seeking to develop sustainable agriculture and to shorten the food supply chain.
No-one expects farmers’ markets to supplant the global food economy, but they can profitably co-exist with it, and fulfil specific consumer needs, while strengthening the entire rural economy, both inside and outside the farm gate.
