R&D 'key to future farm success'
Called Agri Vision, it contains 534 recommendations and was chaired by former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes.
Mr Dukes, asked to sum up the three key recommendations, responded "market, market, market."
That's how strongly he and the top-level committee felt about the way forward, he said, when introducing the report yesterday.
Report initiator former Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh was present at the presentation of the report to Mary Coughlan.
She said it was clear from the report that research and development was the key to future success. It made clear that both farming and the food sector were and continue to be "interdependent."
Being competitive will also require individual sectoral responses for different types of farm businesses, she said.
Ms Coughlan said if the sector is to sustain "innovation, output and competitiveness" research and development will be required at both farm and food level. Other key recommendations stress the vital importance of research and development in all future strategy.
It will need to be better focused and more highly resourced with greater State and institutional integration and co-operation.
Finally, the report noted that farming will play less of a role in the future of rural Ireland than it has done.
Nonetheless, she noted the focus on the provision of "public goods" such as rural landscapes, habitat generation, water protection and improvement of the general environment.
By 2015, the conclusion is that Ireland will have just 10,000 full-time farmers, the bulk of which will be involved in dairying. Mr Dukes said if the food sector and agriculture was to stand a chance it needs to model itself on what Science Foundation Ireland has done for general industry. The link-ups between universities and the food sector will have to be defined in much stronger and much more focused terms, he said.
In terms of amalgamation of some of the State bodies serving the food sector, Mr Dukes said that "may be what's required in some cases."
However, the report stopped short of that and Mr Dukes made the point that he felt the remit of the committee was to set out in very broad terms what the sector needed going forward.
Without doubt, the rapid changes in consumer demands and increased competition are two of the vital issues going forward.
"We need to react to them through focused and well-funded research," he added.
