Farmers turn to IFA to address ‘alarming’ costs
The call has come from the association’s Co Limerick executive, where the latest meeting heard of dairying costs reaching “alarming” proportions, at a level which the industry can no longer sustain, as milk prices come under pressure.
They got some good news from IFA, which will launch a service within weeks to provide electricity at a discount. Unfortunately, it could be up to five years before this service would have any significant impact on their costs, they were told.
Tom Kennedy, a dairy farmer from Pallasgreen, told the meeting: “A farmer who would buy a new tractor or a jeep five years ago would not dream of doing it today because our costs are now alarming. We are being told to work harder and produce more, but our incomes are going back.”
He added: “There are a lot of farmers in business today doing a good job, but they would make several times more by investing the value of their farm in property.
“We now realise that no matter how hard we work, we are not making money, because our costs are escalating, and I see no future for young people in farming, if the profit margin keeps going the way it is. The money we are getting is going nowhere when we pay our bills,” he said
IFA chief economist Con Lucey told the meeting that the outlook is very worrying, because Ireland is now a high cost economy, and the cost of services is hitting farmers very hard.
“We have had huge inflation in the service sector and this is hitting the low income sector. The cost of living in Ireland is now 27% higher than the average for the EU-15, 20% higher than the UK, and the highest in the EU except for Sweden and Denmark. On an ongoing basis, this is creating problems for farmers, because they are not able to recover these increased costs, and the price-cost squeeze is gong to be very difficult for them,” he said.
Limerick IFA chairman Michael Roche said he fully supported the urgent necessity to tackle the costs.
“The costs are rising up behind us at a very worrying rate - public water charges, ESB, veterinary charges have all gone through the roof. Anyone with a young family cannot survive at the moment, because they have to keep increasing production to stand still. We are simply paying too much for the service and it has to stop or we will not be in business, because we cannot go on taking less for everything we produce and paying through the nose,” he said.
