Life after €12m budget cut
Like farmers, the organisation’s 1,500 advisors, researchers, and educators got bad news in the Government estimates last November.
Arguably, the tightening of the Teagasc purse strings was a bigger blow for the agri-food industry than grants and REPS cutbacks, the doubling of disease levies, and the transfer of beef-processing costs to factories and farmers.
Without Teagasc research and advice, farmers and food processors are groping in the dark, and falling behind better informed competitors in other countries. Ireland’s agri-food industries cannot hope to stand still, without research and advice.
Teagasc funding is being cut as the organisation faces the task of guiding farmers through the changes which will be brought about by the mid-term review of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and the World Trade Organisation agreement.
Closer to home, intensive research and advice are needed to introduce the Nitrates Directive, and guide farmers on how to apply it. In the shorter term, farmers will need Teagasc scientists for routine advice, as another season begins.
Every year, something new crops up, and Teagasc steps in with emergency advice.
Last year, it was the weather; this year, it could be the emerging resistance to strobilurin agro-chemicals, or the worrying arrival of canary grass, a potential weed problem on tillage farms.
Meanwhile, other countries race past Ireland in the agri-progress marathon.
In Australia, scientists DNA-tested 5,000 carcasses to locate the genes for tender beef. In other countries, livestock cloning has become routine.
We can hardly expect breakthroughs like these from Teagasc, when it is selected for multi-million euro budget cutbacks, even in these prosperous early years of the millennium.
For many years, the organisation has been undergoing change, as it was forced to become 25% self-financing.
It had to rely heavily on non-permanent contract staff, hardly the best recipe for building morale in a world-class, agri-food organisation.
Teagasc has soldiered on, despite funding cutbacks, which forced the closure of many of the agricultural colleges which served farming and agri-business so well over the years.
Teagasc still delivered value for money; the return on investment in agricultural research in Ireland is ten times the level advocated by the Department of Finance for public sector investment projects.
In a country so dependent on agriculture and food, few should be surprised that agricultural research is so profitable.
Only the Government seems to be unaware of the benefits of Teagasc’s work; otherwise, why cut its annual budget by 12m?
An organisation which has achieved average return on investment in research, over the past three decades, of 47%, should be strengthened, not weakened.
The cost of research on malting barley, at Oak Park, in Co Carlow, has been repaid in increased yield and quality on farms.
Research on phosphorus use, at Johnstown Castle, in Co Wexford, has also paid off, and will lead to invaluable improvements in water quality.
Ireland’s mushroom output could not have multiplied 13-fold in 20 years without the new system of production developed by Teagasc scientists at Kinsealy, in Co Dublin.
Teagasc potato breeders, at Oak Park, have led the field internationally during the past two decades. Almost 20 of their varieties are in commercial production, world-wide.
Rooster and Cara are used in Ireland, the UK, and in Mediterranean and north Africa.
Such achievements show Teagasc has the potential to become one of the few “world-class” parts of the Government’s apparatus, but for the penny-pinching mentality of its paymasters.
Cutting edge agricultural research is the key to competitiveness, says Teagasc’s director, Jim Flanagan.
Unfortunately, making ends meet will be a more important objective for him, this year, than devising research plans.
