Grain imports driving prices down, claim angry farmers
IFA president John Dillon and Grain Committee chairman Paddy Harrington led the protest at the Cereals Association of Ireland pre-harvest forum, which includes all the major players in the grain industry. Mr Dillon claimed growers were being forced out of business because they were being paid prices below the cost of production.
“Imported grain is being brought into the country at critical times, deliberately closing off market outlets for native Irish grain, with the objective of driving down prices to native growers.” Mr Dillon said independent surveys have shown that it costs in the region of 95 to 105 to produce a tonne of wheat and 100 to 105 to produce barley excluding depreciation and the cost of conacre.
The trade's effort to set a price of 82.50 per tonne for green barley will force many cereal growers out of business as up to 40% of the land being farmed is conacre.
“IFA will not stand idly by and watch an important native industry go down the tubes, enabling major corporations to hold Irish farmers to ransom over animal feed prices.
“If cereal farmers are forced out of business, this will have major ramifications for the pig and poultry industry and lead to its rapid demise,” he said.
It was later learned that a meeting between industry representatives and the farmers is to be arranged for later this week or early next week.
Meanwhile, Séamus Funge, secretary, Cereals Association of Ireland, said there had been an increase this year in the area under cereals of 18,000ha to 298,000ha, the highest acreage for several years. The increase was led by higher plantings of winter wheat in the glorious autumn of 2001. The winter wheat area is up from 48,000ha to 83,000ha with a consequent decline in spring wheat plantings from 34,000ha to 23,000ha. Spring barley area is marginally down and oats are more or less at the same level as a year earlier.
He said there had been much speculation this year on the effect of the generally adverse growing conditions on cereal yields. While winter wheat and spring crops still have growth potential, it is clear that the yield of all cereal crops will be lower than the record levels of the past two years, when good conditions allied to modern production technology, helped to boost yields to levels not previously achieved. The expected yields this year will be reminiscent of 1998, with the exception of oats, which appear to be less affected by the high levels of rainfall than other crops. The estimated level of production was 2,035,000 tonnes, in line with the average level of 2m tonnes over the past 20 years.
